The art of taking photographs on PAPER, of which your work treats at considerable length, has as yet attracted but little attention in this country, though destined, as I fully believe, to attain an importance far superior to that to which the Daguerreotype has risen. The American mind needs a waking up upon the subject, and I think your book will give a powerful impulse in this direction. In Germany a high degree of perfection has been reached, and I hope your countrymen will not be slow to follow. Your interesting account of the experiments of Mr. Wattles was entirely new to me, and is another among the many evidences that when the age is fully ripe for any great discovery, it is rare that it does not occur to more than a single mind. Trusting that your work will meet with the encouragement which your trouble in preparing it deserves, and with gratitude for the undeserved compliment paid to me in its dedication, I remain, very sincerely, Your friend and well wisher, E. ANTHONY. PHOTOGRAPHY. CHAP. I. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ART. As in all cases of great and valuable inventions in science and art the English lay claim to the honor of having first discovered that of Photogenic drawing. But we shall see in the progress of this history, that like many other assumptions of their authors, priority in this is no more due them, then the invention of steamboats,