TALBOT4490

[The envelope for this letter is in a private collection:]
Henry Fox Talbot Esq^r
Lacock Abbey
near Chippenham
Wilts

_________

My dear Sir

A great many thanks to you for the exquisite specimens of the Calotype which surpass anything I had heard of. The power of depicting scenes of conversation & acting between living persons is a wonderful stride. ¹ The tour you are projecting in search of Architectural Specimens will be the most interesting thing imaginable. In a very few hours you will put on record all the details of a cathedral which would have cost a draftsman years of yore to execute with infinitely less fidelity.

I have not done much lately in photog^y having been at work at my astronomical reductions and the flower season not being come on. - but within these two fine days I have made some considerable steps towards colour and have got at some very singular facts respecting the exceedingly definite action of a certain blue ray on the hydriodic papers.- I have succeeded in getting (at last) a very respectable green but unluckily it does not lie precisely in the green region of the spectrum, but lower, among the yellow & orange rays.- I perceive however that a perfect coloured spectrum though difficult no doubt is far from hopeless and I think I clearly see my way to the production of at least a passable one which if the present fine weather lasts another week I expect to hunt down, and in that case I shall probably be able to send you in return for your beautiful things some coloured impressions of coloured pictures.

Believe me
Dear Sir
Yours very truly

JFW Herschel