Line drawings are not generally suitable copy for the half-tone process, but it is occasionally desirable to use that process instead of zinc etching for reproducing a line drawing that has been inexpertly prepared if the cost of redrawing would more than offset the difference in cost between zinc etching and the more expensive half-tone process. In reproducing a pen drawing by half tone the lines become softened and represent the details and shading only; but the pen drawing may be further developed by brush work. Examples of this type of reproduction are Plates V, _A_, VI, _A_, and XV, figure 10, and other illustrations in Survey Monograph 34. Vignetting, which consists of a skillful grading off of the edges of a picture, as well as extensive tooling or hand engraving, is often employed for artistic effect but should be specified only for exceptional illustrations. The plates made for the Survey are either "square trimmed" or the ground tint is entirely omitted or routed away; they are not usually tooled or vignetted. Half-tone cuts etched on copper cost 20 to 60 cents a square inch, the cost being varied according to a standard scale based on the ascertained cost of reproduction. Those that require a screen finer than 150 lines cost 25 per cent additional. The minimum charge for a single cut is $3. Half tones etched on zinc (100-line screen or coarser) cost 25 per cent less than those etched on copper. THREE-COLOR HALF-TONE PROCESS. The three-color process is practically an adaptation of the half-tone process to color printing based on the theory that all colors or hues in nature can be reproduced by combinations of three colors of the spectrum--red, blue, and yellow. The process differs from the ordinary half-tone process particularly in the use of color filters in making the negatives and in the character of screens and diaphragms used. This process, like all others, is worked somewhat differently in different establishments. In what is called the indirect method, the one most commonly used, twelve photographic operations are necessary to produce one illustration, or the three plates or cuts from which one illustration is to be reproduced by printing. These twelve operations produce three chromatic negatives, each representing one color; three transparencies or positives, made from the chromatic negatives; three half-tone negatives, made from the positives; and finally three contact prints, made on sensitized metal plates. In what is called the direct method the half-tone screen is placed in front of the photographic plate so that it becomes also a half-tone negative from which a print is made on a sensitized metal plate. Thus the photographic operations in the direct method are reduced to six, but the interference to the passage of light offered by the half-tone screen and by the prism used to reverse the image on the negative lengthens the time of exposure.