45 Gold St., New York, N. Y., who will
forward a plate to you by mail. Be very particular in giving your full
and correct _post-office_ address. These plates only need cleaning to
fit them for use.

2. BENZINE, used for cleaning the plate, sold by grocers or druggists at
about five cents a pint for common quality.

3. WHITING or SPANISH WHITE, also for cleaning the plate. A very small
quantity will do.

4. CLEAN COTTON RAGS.--Some pieces of soft old shirting are just the
thing.

5. ETCHING-GROUND, with which to protect the plate against the action of
the acid. This ground is sold in balls about the size of a walnut. If
you do not live in a city where you can buy the ground, you may as well
make it yourself. Here is a recipe for a very cheap and at the same time
very good ground. It is the ground used by Mr. Peter Moran, one of the
most experienced of our American etchers. Buy at a drug-shop (not an
apothecary's) or painter's supply-store:--

Two ounces best natural asphaltum (also called Egyptian asphaltum),
worth about ten cents.

One and a half ounces best white virgin wax, worth about six cents.

One ounce Burgundy pitch, worth say five cents.

Break the wax into small pieces, and reduce the Burgundy pitch to fine
powder in a mortar, or have it powdered at the drug-shop. Take a clean
earthenware pot glazed on the inside, with a handle to it (in Boston you
can buy one for fifteen cents at G. A. Miller & Co.'s, 101 Shawmut
Avenue), and in this pot melt your asphaltum over a slow fire, taking
very good care not to let it boil over, or otherwise you might possibly
set the house afire. When the asphaltum has melted add the wax
gradually, stirring all the while with a clean glass or metal rod. Then
add the Burgundy pitch in the same way. Keep stirring the fluid mass,
and let it boil up two or three times, always taking care to prevent
boiling over! Then pour the whole into a pan full of tepid water, and
while it is still soft and pliant, form into balls of the required size,
working all the while under the water. If you touch the mass while it is
still too hot, you may possibly burn your fingers, but a true enthusiast
does not care for such small things. You will thus get about eight or
nine balls of very good ground at an outlay of about thirty-six cents in
cash, and some little time. Nearly all recipes order the wax to be
melted first, but as the asphaltum requires a greater heat to reduce it
to a fluid condit