photography in connection with wood engraving, it is interesting to note that it was soon realised that it was desirable to save the drawings of the artists if possible. Obviously if they were drawn on the block the wood engraver cut them away. As early as 1857 patents were taken out for producing photographs upon wood ready for the engraver. Soon after 1861 this became a fairly general practice. It had two advantages—it enabled the engraver to compare his work with the original drawing, and it saved the drawing itself from destruction. There is a third incidental advantage, and that is that it is possible to make a process block from this original drawing and compare it with the wood engraving to see whether so much was really lost at the hands of the engraver and printer as the artists would have us believe.
In many cases when the designer drew on the wood block, some compunction seems to have seized the wood engraver, and this drawing was photographed upon another block to be cut, but the original block with the original drawing has been preserved. The Victoria and Albert Museum has a rich collection of wood blocks upon which are drawings that have not been cut up, and of early proofs from the wood blocks with artist's and engraver's corrections upon them.
It should, too, be mentioned that science came to the aid of the wood engraver; unfortunately it subsequently demolished him. In magazine work and in large editions of books it was found that the wood block could not stand the printing and the
