November ii, 1915] 



NATURE 



2bi 



in draughtsmanship, and want of artistic percep- 

 tion in the selection or arrangement of subjects, 

 no doubt account for some of the shortcomings 

 ol illustrated scientific works. But beyond these 

 (-auses there exists a third, unfamiliarity with the 

 technical processes employed in the manufacture 

 and printing of illustrations of different kinds. 

 Drawings made with the pencil, the pen, or the 

 brush require each of them a different treatment 

 from that which is appropriate for photographs. 

 The arts of copper-plate etching, of dry-point 

 etching, of mezzotint, of wood-engraving, steel- 

 engraving, lithography, and aquatint are each 

 marked out for special preferences in particular 

 cases. In the case of photographic reproduc- 

 tion the processes of photogravure, collotype, 

 half-tone block making and line block making 

 have each their own particular advantages ; some 

 are better for one subject, or for one kind of book, 

 and others for other subjects or books. And this 

 quite apart from any of the more complicated 

 questions of reproduction in colour. 



The volume before us is a brave and not unsuc- 

 cessful attempt to guide the scientific writer, and 

 to put into his hands a manual which in clear and 

 simple language reviews the various means by 

 which book illustrations are made, whether by 

 hand or by camera, and converted into printed 

 pictures. The author, who is a professed botanist 

 and an accomplished artist to boot, possesses a 

 wide acquaintance with the art of book illustra- 

 tion, and his references to leading works in which 

 the pictures are produced in different ways are 

 copious and appropriate. He is as much at home 

 with the delightful wood-cuts of the old herbals 

 of Fuchsius and Matthiolus as with the hand- 

 coloured copper-plate engravings of Sowerby or 

 the plates in the Philosophical Transactions. But 

 for scientific workers other than botanists it will 

 be tantalising to find that for examples of different 

 kinds of illustration a majority of the references 

 are to the volumes of botanical serials or to inac- 

 cessible and obscure botanical monographs. The 

 abundance of excellent illustrations, nearly all 

 original, including twelve plates and thirty-eight 

 text-figures, goes far to atone for this defect. 



Our author discusses his subject under the three 

 headings of intaglio printing, plane surface print- 

 ing, and relief printing. He deals with the first 

 section in eleven pages, in which brief compass 

 he includes technical descriptions of the processes 

 of line engraving, etching, soft-ground etching, 

 mezzotint, and photogravure. The instructions 

 are too brief to be taken as working guides for 

 the practice of the respective arts, but may serve 

 to enable intelligent readers to recognise the pro- 

 cess by which any particular illustration has been 

 NO. 2402, VOL. 96] 



produced. Under the title of " Plane Surface 

 Printing," a large amount of space is rightly 

 devoted to lithography, though for the successful 

 employment of this process a degree of crafts- 

 manship is necessary to which few scientific book- 

 writers can ever attain. Chromolithography is 

 dismissed very briefly, as are photolithographic 

 processes also; while more attention is given to 

 collotype, a process which except in the hands of 

 professional craftsmen is seldom satisfactory. 

 Under the heading of " Relief Printing " are 

 grouped the topics of wood-cutting and wood- 

 engraving (of which arts the author wisely omits 

 all technical instructions), the half-tone photo- 

 mechanical process, the half-tone three-colour pro- 

 cess, the production of photomechanical line- 

 blocks, and the swelled-gelatine process. The 

 survey is not quite comprehensive ; it does not 

 include the useful, if little used, process called 

 "monotype" or "electrotint," which is one of the 

 easiest for amateurs. It does not mention the 

 excellent tungstate of lead process for line-blocks 

 used by Messrs. Walker and Boutall. Neither 

 does the author refer to the use of a process, 

 common in the production of postage-stamps, of 

 surface-printing transferred from an original that 

 was engraved on copper or steel. 



Probably the most useful parts of the work will 

 be the passages intercalated between the descrip- 

 tive matter, in which the author gives admirable 

 advice to the writers of scientific papers on the 

 preparation of their illustrations, on methods of 

 drawing for reproduction, whether of line-dia- 

 grams, or of microscopic details, of maps, or of 

 graphs. He advises, on the whole, against the 

 use of separate plates, and is in favour of illustra- 

 tions incorporated in the text, and therefore 

 printed from relief-blocks. Some of the sugges- 

 tions about spacing out figures on a plate or 

 avoiding the abomination of glazed paper, are, 

 if rather naive, decidedly apposite. By way of 

 affording comparison between results of rival 

 methods three plates are given, produced from 

 the same photographic negative (a salt-marsh in 

 Brittany) in photogravure, in collotype, and by 

 half-tone block respectively. All are excellent; 

 but the half-tone block is remarkably good. 



The recommendations as to drawing for the 

 purpose of reproduction are excellent, but the 

 author should not call the art of " lettering " (so 

 neglected by non-professional draughtsmen) by 

 the name of " printing " ; that is exactly what it 

 is not. Very useful hints are given as to the aid 

 to be derived by drawing in waterproof ink upon 

 an ordinary photographic silver-print, which is 

 then bleached out chemically (recipes given for the 

 bleaching agent), leaving a useful line-drawing. 



