TALBOT4293

31 Sackville S^{t 1}
July 1. 1841

Dear Sir

On the 10^th June I read my paper to the R. Soc^y describing the Calotype process, and shortly after I sent you some remarks on it with specimens of the substances employed. ² I hope you received them, and if you try the process and find any difficulties (as some of my friends have done) I shall be happy to add any further explanations. On my return to Town from a little rustication, I found that the Council had rejected the paper from the Transactions. On enquiring the cause, I was told that they understood the paper to have been printed elsewhere previously to its being read to the Society. ³ A very erroneous supposition; and it is greatly to be lamented that in a body like the Royal Society such a system of secrecy , or mystery, should prevail, as not to give the author of a Paper any intimation whatever of such an objection being made, nor ask him for any explanation. D^r Roget ⁴ whom I have found in Town (most of the others being dispersed for the summer) is of opinion that the Council are in error & ought to reverse their decision, and that it would be well if I wrote them a circular letter pointing out the mistake – A most irksome task & which I hesitate to undertake. The result is, that any future papers of mine on the same subject will appear in the Transactions, as members without a head – acephalous – hardly intelligible: or rather, I shall do better to abstain from writing any.

I am sorry that the body whose office it is to encourage science in England, encourages it in this way – but such is the case

All the photographs you sent me, done with vegetable juices, were positive. Is this the case universally?

Yours very truly
H. F. Talbot

It is a nice point to determine which is the most sensitive to light, my Calotype paper, or the Daguerreotype improved by Claudet’s process. ⁵ I am sensitive to simple moonlight; he has not yet made the trial, which I throw out as a challenge to all photographers of the present day: viz. that I grow dark in moonlight before they do.

Sir J. Herschel Bar^t
Collingwood
Hawkhurst
Kent