It must then be dried as quickly as possible over a stove, or in a current of warm air; avoiding, however, such heat as may injure the tint. The presence of alcohol prevents the solution of the gummy principle, which, when present, gives a smeary surface; but the evenness of tint given by this process results chiefly from that singular intestine movement which always takes place when alcohol is in the act of separation from water by evaporation; a movement which disperses knots and blots in the film of liquid with great energy, and spreads them over the surrounding surface.

Corchorus Japonica

The flowers of this common and hardy but highly ornamental plant are of a fine yellow, somewhat inclining to orange, and this is also the colour the expressed juice imparts to paper. As the flower begins to fade the petals whiten,— an indication of their photographic sensibility which is amply verified on exposure of the stained paper to sunshine. I have hitherto met with no vegetable colour so sensitive. If the flowers be gathered in the height of their season, paper so coloured (which is of a very beautiful and even yellow) begins to discolour in ten or twelve minutes in clear sunshine, and in half an hour is completely whitened. The colour seems to resist the first impression of the light, as if by some remains of vitality, which being overcome, the tint gives way at once, and the discoloration, whem commenced, goes on rapidly. It does not even cease in the dark when once begun. Hence it happens that photographic impressions taken on such paper, which, when fresh, are very sharp and beautiful, fade by keeping, visibly from day to day, however carefully preserved from light. They require from half an hour to an hour to complete, according to the sunshine. Hydriodate of potash cautiously applied retards considerably, but does not ultimately prevent, this spontaneous discharge.

Common Ten Weeks Stocks: Mathiola Annua

Paper stained with the tincture of this flower is changed to a vivid scarlet by acids, and to green by alkalies ; if ammonia be used the red colour is restored as the ammonia evaporates, proving the absence of any acid quality in the colouring matter sufficiently energetic to coerce the elastic force of the alkaline gas. Sulphurous acid whitens it, as does the alkaline sulphites ; but this effect is transient, and the red colour is slowly restored by free exposure to air, especially with the aid of light, whose influence in this case is the more remarkable, being exactly the reverse of its ordinary action on this colouring principle, which it destroys irrecoverably, as above stated. The following experiments were made to trace and illustrate this curious change:—

" Two photographic copies of engravings taken on paper tinted with this colour were placed in a jar of sulphurous acid gas, by which they were completely whitened, and all traces of the pictures obliterated. They were then exposed to free air, the one in the dark, the other in sunshine. Both recovered, but the former much more slowly than the latter. The restoration of the picture exposed to the sun was completed in twenty-four hours, that in the dark not till after a lapse of two or three days.

" A slip of the stained paper was wetted with liquid sulphurous acid, and laid on blotting-paper similarly wetted. Being then crossed with a strip of black paper, it was laid between glass plates and (evaporation of the acid being thus prevented) was exposed to full sunshine. After some time the red colour (in spite of the presence of the acid) was considerably restored in the portion exposed, while the whole of the portion covered by the black paper remained (of course) perfectly white.

" Slips of paper, stained as above, were placed under a receiver, beside a small capsule of liquid sulphurous acid. When completely discoloured, they were subjected (on various occasions, and after various lengths of exposure to the acid fumes, from half an hour to many days) to the action of the spectrum ; and it was found, as indeed I had expected, that the restoration of colour was operated by rays complementary to those which destroy it in the natural state of the paper; the violet rays being chiefly active, the blue almost equally so, the green little, and the yellow, orange, and most refrangible red, not at all. In one experiment a pretty-well defined red solar image was developed by the least refrangible red rays also, being precisely those for which, in the unprepared paper the discolouring action is abruptly cut off. But this spot I never succeeded in reproducing; and it ought also to be mentioned, that, according to differences in the preparation not obvious, the degree of sensibility, generally, of the bleached paper to the restorative action of light, differed greatly; in some cases a perceptible reddening being produced in ten seconds, and a considerable streak in two minutes, while in others a very long time was required to produce any effect. The dormancy of this colouring principle, under the influence of sulphurous acid, is well shown by dropping a little weak sulphuric acid on the paper bleached by that gas, which immediately restores the red colour in all its vigour. In like manner alkalies restore the colour, converting it at the same time into green.

Upapaver Orientals

The chemical habitudes of the sulphurous acid render it highly probable that its action in inducing a dormant state of the colorific principle, consists in a partial deoxidizement, unaccompanied, however, with disorganization of its molecules. And this view is corroborated by the similar action of alcohol already spoken of; similar, that is, in kind, though less complete in degree. Most commonly, vegetable colours, weakened by the action of alcohol, are speedily restored on the total evaporation of the ingredient. But one remarkable instance of absolute dormancy induced by that agent has occurred to me in the case of Papaver orientale, a flower of a vivid orange colour, bordering on scarlet, the colouring matter of which is not extractable otherwise than by alcohol, and then only in a state so completely masked as to impart no more than a faint yellowish or pinkish hue to paper, which it retains when thoroughly dry, and apparently during any length of time, without perceptible increase of tint. If at any time, however, a drop of weak acid be applied to paper prepared with this tincture, a vivid scarlet colour is immediately developed; thus demon-stating the continued though latent existence of the colouring principle. On observing this, it occurred to me to inquire whether, in its dormant state, that principle still retained its susceptibility of being acted on by light, since the same powerful and delicate agent which had been shown, in so many cases as to constitute a general law, capable of disorganizing and destroying vegetable colours actually developed, might easily be presumed competent to destroy the capacity for assuming colour, in such organic matter as might possess it, under the influence of their otherwise appropriate chemical stimuli. A strip of the paper was therefore exposed for an hour or two to the spectrum, but without any sensible effect, the whole surface being equally reddened by an acid. As this experiment sufficiently indicated the action of light, if any, to be very slow, I next placed a strip, partly covered, in a south-east window, where it remained from June 19 to August 19, receiving the few and scanty sunbeams which that interval of the deplorable summer of 1841 afforded. When removed, the part exposed could barely be distinguished from the part shaded, as a trifle yellower. But on applying acid, the exposed and shaded portions were at once distinguished by the assumption of a vivid red in the latter, and the former remaining unchanged.