PREPARING DRAWINGS FOR THE MICROSCOPICAL NEWS. 19 
PREPARING DRAWINGS FOR THE 
MICROSCOPICAL NEWS. 
eee is no doubt that the introduction of engravings into the 
text of Microscopical literature increases the value to the reader 
in a very great degree. Many papers cannot be well understood 
without diagrams, especially by those who are still unacquainted 
with the rudiments of the subject, and many such communications 
must necessarily be passed over by microscopists as not being 
sufficiently lucid to be studied without the expenditure of con- 
siderable trouble and expense. 
We have always endeavoured to illustrate the papers contributed 
to The Northern Microscopist as satisfactorily as our income would 
allow; and so certain are we that the course is a correct one, that 
we have been much exercised to find a method whereby the process 
of illustration might be considerably extended. We have, in our 
two former volumes, attempted several methods of preparing the 
illustrations. Photography, as in No. 21, 1882 ; Photo-lithography, 
No. 3, 1881; Woodbury-type, No. 4, 1881 ; Chromo-lithography, 
No. 11, 1881; Ordinary lithography, as exemplified in the six 
plates accompanying Mr. Dallinger’s paper on “ Life Histories and 
their Lessons” in last year’s volume, while the remainder consist of 
wood blocks or metal plates produced by a process to which we 
wish to draw the attention of our readers. ‘The wood blocks have 
in great part been prepared by photography, either from the objects 
themselves or from large class diagrams. For instance, the blocks 
illustrating Mr. Rideout’s paper on Dytiscus marginalis were photo- 
graphed from slides sent to us by the reader of the paper, and cut 
on wood by a London engraver. The illustrations inserted in Mr. 
Blackburn’s paper on the Ephemeridz were reduced from the large 
diagrams exhibited to the meeting at which his paper was read, by 
means of photography, and transferred to wood for the engravers. 
All these processes are necessarily expensive, and none of them 
could furnish illustrations at a sufficiently cheap rate to enable us to 
give more than one illustration monthly, if of any degree of com- 
plexity. We have, therefore, great pleasure in calling attention to 
Mr. Stanley’s articles on Mosses, in which the illustrations have 
been prepared at so low a cost as to enable us to successfully 
illustrate his chapters. 
The process by which the blocks have been prepared, viz. :— 
Photo-zincography being one, but little known, a few experiments 
had to be made in order to ascertain what style of original drawing 
produces the best illustration. ‘The development of the ideas may 
be seen by first inspecting Figs. 15, 16 and 17 in the September 
number of our last year’s volume. The illustrations there represented 
