transparent palette, I use an ordinary moist sixteen-pan color-box,
being always careful never to blur it with even a brush stroke of body
color (Chinese white); and for my opaque work, an oval white metal
palette, with thumb-hole, and indentations around its edge into which
I squeeze the contents of my moist water-color tubes, my Chinese
white being heaped up in a little mound near my thumb.

The result may be seen in some of the illustrations accompanying this
text.

CHARCOAL

Before going into the value of charcoal as a medium in the recording
of the various aspects of nature in black-and-white, it will be wise
to review the several mediums in general use, namely, etching, pen and
ink, lithographic crayon, and charcoal gray in connection with Chinese
white; it will be well, also, to note the various mechanical processes
in use for the reproductions of these drawings on white paper.

Those of you who have seen the early illustration in _Harper's
Magazine_ of the late fifties will recall the work of "Porte Crayon"
(Colonel Strother), drawn on wood by the artist and engraved by such
men as A. V. S. Anthony and John Sartain. You will also recall how
some twenty-five years later an effective and marvellous change took
place in the quality of these reproductions, being by far the most
unique and rapid in the history of any art of the century. In less
than ten years, between 1876 and 1886, came this sudden awakening to
the necessity of better work from the burin, followed by an enormous
commercial demand for such results, until by common consent the
American engraver first rivalled and then surpassed the world. If we
search for the cause we find that, like many other inventions
developing others of still greater importance, as the telegraph
developed the telephone, electric light, and the phonograph, this
marvellous change is due entirely to the discovery and possibility of
photographing direct from the original upon the boxwood itself,
producing with an instant's exposure a complete reproduction of the
original drawing, with all its texture, gradation, and quality, not
only doing away entirely with the intermediate draftsman, as was the
case with "Porte Crayon's" work, but obtaining a result impossible to
the most skilful of the artists on wood of his day.

Another important feature in the discovery was the possibility of
reducing a drawing to any size required, thus fitting it exactly to
the necessities of