Mr. Sala, writing to _Notes and Queries_
(Third Series, i. 365), says: ``Altogether I
have long since arrived at the conclusion
that there are more `devils' in a printing
office than are dreamt of in our philosophy--
the blunder fiends to wit--ever
busy in peppering the `formes' with errors
which defy the minutest revisions of
reader, author, sub-editor, and editor.''
Mr. Sala gives an instance which occurred

to himself. He wrote that Dr.
Livingstone wore a cap with a tarnished gold
lace band; but the printer altered the
word tarnished into _famished_, to the serious
confusion of the passage.

Some of the most amusing blunders
occur by the change of a single letter.
Thus, in an account of the danger to an
express train by a cow getting on the line
in front, the reporter was made to say that
as the safest course under the circumstances
the engine driver ``put on full
steam, dashed up against the cow, and
literally cut it into _calves_.'' A short time
ago an account was given in an address of
the early struggles of an eminent portrait
painter, and the statement appeared in
print that, working at the easel from eight
o'clock in the morning till eight o'clock