SCIENCE IN THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD 



About the middle of the fifteenth century another 

 method of wood-engraving called crible came into use. 

 In this method of engraving the wood was not cut away 

 in lines as in the ordinary wood-engravings, the various 

 tones being obtained by punching holes in the surface of 

 the block. By this method all gradations in tones were 

 obtainable, the results being not unlike coarse spatter- 

 work or dotting, as done in certain kinds of pen draw- 

 ings. This process, while giving excellent results, was 

 extremely slow and tedious, and passed out of existence 

 entirely a little later, except for certain purposes for 

 which it is still admirably adapted. For astronom- 

 ical charts, for example, where the sky is repre- 

 sented as a black background, and the stars as 

 points of light of various sizes and in certain posi- 

 tions, the crible method of wood-engraving gives ex- 

 cellent results. 



The sixteenth-century wood-engravings were a great 

 improvement over those of the preceding century, 

 probably the best known being the pictures of Albrecht 

 Diirer. Some of these are so skilfully engraved that 

 they approach the perfection of modern engravings, 

 although, of course, lacking in perspective and color- 

 values which have become one of the essentials of 

 modern illustration. From the time of Diirer, the im- 

 provement in wood-engraving was a steady growth until, 

 by the beginning of the last quarter of the nineteenth 

 century, it had reached its highest perfection. Then, 

 about the year 1887, photographic-process reproduc- 

 tion made its appearance, and since that time wood- 

 engraving has rapidly declined until, as a method of 



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