it
cannot be wetted and stretched, thinking it useless to make use of such a
costly material when a tolerably thick drawing-paper will more than serve
the same purpose at a very considerably less expense, seeing that the
photograph thus mounted bears a much closer resemblance {382} to that of a
good and costly print. A good plain or tinted sheet of drawing-paper, 30
inches by 22, may be obtained at the artists' colour shops for sixpence,
sufficiently large for two drawings, 9 inches by 11, allowing a sufficient
margin.

After various trials, the plan I have found decidedly the best is the
following:--Soak the drawing-paper in a vessel of water for ten minutes, or
until it appears by its flaccidity to have become perfectly saturated; put
it at once into an artist's stretching frame, brush over the back of the
photograph with rather thin and perfectly smooth paste, allow it a few
minutes to imbibe a portion of the moisture of the paste, and then lay it
smoothly down on the damp paper now on the stretching frame, of course
carefully pressing out all air bubbles as you gradually, beginning at one
side, smooth down the pasted picture. It should remain in a dry place (not
placed before a fire) until the whole has become quite dry, about ten or
twelve hours. It may then be taken out of the frame, cut to the desired
shape, and a single or double line nicely drawn around the picture, at a
distance suitable to each individual's taste, by the help of sepia-coloured
ink and a crowquill pen, both of which may also be bought at the artists'
colour shop. Should it be required to be still more nicely mounted, and to
appear to have been one and the same paper originally, the back edges of
the picture should, previous to laying on the paste, be rubbed down to a
fine and knife-like edge with a piece of the finest sand-paper placed on a
wine cork, or substance of a similar size. The drawing-paper should be of
the same shade and tint as the ground of the photograph.

A novice in the wax-paper process (having heretofore worked the collodion
and calotype, from its very desirable property of keeping long good after
being excited, _i. e._ the wax paper), I am very desirous of getting over
an unexpected difficulty in its manipulation; and if some one of the many
liberal-minded contributors to your justly wide-spread periodical, well
versed in that department of the art, would lend me a helping hand in my
present difficulty, I should feel more t