Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/466

448. Last June Mr. Edward S. Schmid, the bird fancier of Washington, D. C, kindly loaned him a living specimen of a sub-adult long-eared owl, and this pugnacious bird soon proved himself to be a most capital subject from which to secure the more unusual attitudes so characteristic of the group. Having photographically pictured him in postures of rest, he was next teased to assume various ones of defiance, and these were secured with equal celerity and ease—not little, unrecognizable inch-high affairs either, but only a degree less than half natural size, capable of exhibiting all the external characters of the species. From the collection one of these is selected and offered to the reader in Fig. 2, and for a portrait of a defiant owl it is surely a very striking likeness.

Pictures as good as this one have been obtained by the writer of the screech owl, Aiken's owl (male and female in one print), the barred owl, and the barn owl, the last-named species being the most difficult subject of this famous family yet handled. Success was at last secured, however, where the specimen is shown (one third natural size) resting on one leg upon an old stump of a tree in a shady bit of woods. It has not at this writing yet been published.

Turtles, frogs, snakes, and lizards have been, to the extent of a score or more, taken with admirable success. My picture of the tree frogs has already appeared both in London and in New York, and the common bullfrog in Appletons' Popular Science Monthly. Forty or fifty have appeared in other places, and this is only noted here as proof of the practicability of illustrating zoölogical works by these methods, and in support of the fact of the way they are appreciated and utilized by naturalists.

Recently attention has been turned to the photography of fishes, a group of subjects presenting more difficulties to confront the artist and his camera than almost any other class. Nevertheless, success along these lines, too, is coming fast, and it is safe to predict that the photographic picture, in a vast number of instances, of ichthyological specimens will place the tediously produced pen-drawing in black and white in the background.

In July (1897) the Honorable United States Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries, J. J. Price, Esq., at Washington, D. C, extended the writer unusual facilities to attempt some camera work in this direction at the aquaria of the Central Station. Without any special preparation this courtesy was almost at once availed of, and, although the circumstances were by no means the most favorable under which the first exposures were made upon the living fish in the aquaria tanks, yet some of the results were more or less gratifying, and certainly measured a standard of success sufficient to encourage other and more elaborate trials. Good photographic pictures