Copies of several of these "crystallotypes" of the moon I afterwards obtained and exhibited at the Photographic Exhibition in connection with the British Association which met in Glasgow in 1855. The "crystallotypes" were simply enlarged photographs, about eight or nine inches in diameter, and conveyed to the mind an excellent idea of the moon's surface. The orange-like form and the principal craters were distinctly marked. Indeed, so much were they admired as portraits of the moon, that one of the _savans_ bought the set at the close of the exhibition.
Mr. Whipple is still a successful practitioner of our delightful art in the "Athens of the Western World," and has reaped the reward of his continuity and devotion to his favourite art. The late decision of the American law courts on the validity of Mr. Cutting's patent for the use of bromides in collodion must have laid Mr. Whipple under serious liabilities, for he used bromo-iodized negative collodion for iron development as far back as 1853.
There were many other professional photographers in the chief city of Massachusetts; but I have described the characteristics of the principal and oldest concerns. Doubtless there are many new ones since I visited the city where Benjamin Franklin served his apprenticeship as a printer; where the "colonists" in 1773, rather than pay the obnoxious "tea tax," pitched all the tea out of the ships into the waters of Boston Bay, and commenced that long struggle against oppression and unjust taxation which eventually ended in severing the North American Colonies from the mother country. With the knowledge of all this, it is the more surprising that they should now so quietly submit to what must be an obnoxious and troublesome system of taxation; for, not only have photographers to pay an annual licence of about two guineas for carrying on their trade, but also to affix a government stamp on each picture sent out, which is a further tax of about one penny on each. Surely the patience of our brother photographers on the other side of the Atlantic must be sorely tried, what with the troubles of their business, the whims and eccentricities of their sitters, Mr. Cutting's unkind cut, and the prowling visitations of the tax-collector.