Though this system of subdividing the engraving effects a great saving of time, it must be admitted that it does not always result in the production of a first-rate work of art as a whole. For, supposing the subject to be a landscape with a good stretch of trees, the two or three engravers who have the trees to engrave have, perhaps, each a different method of rendering foliage; and when the whole is completed, and the different pieces are put together, the trees perhaps appear like a piece of patchwork, with a distinct edge to each man's work. To harmonise and dovetail (so to speak) these different pieces of work is the task of the superintending artist, who retouches the first proof of the engraving and endeavours to blend together the differences of colour and texture. This is often no easy task, for the press is generally waiting, and the time that is left for such work is often reduced to minutes where hours would scarcely suffice to accomplish all that might be done. Or the block to be engraved may be a marine subject, with a stormy sea. In this case, like the landscape, two or three engravers may be employed upon the water, each of them having a different way of representing that element. Here it is even more difficult than in the landscape to blend the conflicting pieces of work, and requires an amount of 'knocking about' that sometimes astonishes the original artist. All this is the necessary result of the hurry in which the greater part of newspaper engravings have to be produced. When the conditions are more favourable better things are successfully attempted, and of this the illustrated newspapers of the day have given abundant proofs. It is obvious that when a block is divided and the parts are distributed in various hands, if any accident should occur to one part the whole block is jeopardised. It is much to the credit of the fraternity of engravers that this rarely or ever happens. I only remember one instance of a failure of this kind within my own experience. An engraver of decidedly Bohemian character, after a hard night's work on the tenth part of a page block, thought fit to recruit himself with a cheering cup. In the exhilaration that followed he lost the piece of work upon which he had been engaged, and thereby rendered useless the efforts of himself and his nine compatriots.