Perhaps no art exercised in this country is less known to the public than that of wood engraving; and hence it arises that most persons who have incidently or even expressly written on the subject have committed so many mistakes respecting the practice. It is from a want of practical knowledge that we have had so many absurd speculations respecting the manner in which the old wood engravers executed their cross-hatchings, and so many notions about vegetable putties and metallic relief engraving. Even in a Memoir of Bewick, printed in 1836, we find the following passage, which certainly would not have appeared had the writer paid any attention to the numerous wood-cuts, containing cross-hatchings of the most delicate kind, published in England between 1820 and 1834 :—“The principal characteristic of the ancient masters is the crossing of the black lines, to produce or deepen the shade, commonly called cross-hatching. Whether this was done by employing different blocks, one after another, as in calicoprinting and paper-staining, it may be difficult to say; but to produce them on the same block is so difficult and unnatural, that though Nesbit, one of Bewick's early pupils, attempted it on a few occasions, and the splendid print of Dentatus by Harvey shows that it is not impossible even on a large scale, yet the waste of time and labour is scarcely worth the effect produced.”