his is an operation, I
think, very difficult to carry out, and it is simpler to cut the furrow
into a definite hole if one wishes to proceed in this way. Let us try and
imagine some kind of putty for such repairs.

I do not wish to write hastily of any method of procedure for the
fabrication of bruised leather, but it seems to me that a paste or putty
formed of powdered or shredded leather, boiled with a little flour paste,
would answer our purpose. With this one could fill up the furrow and then,
when the paste has dried, scrape off the excess surface and burnish the
dried inlay. This method should answer very well, but there is still
another which I have tried, although it is not so delicate. I employed
flour paste mixed simply with Spanish white.[16] With this, I puttied up
my book like a picture in process of being retouched. I even succeeded,
with this paste, in imitating the grain of the morocco. I tinted the
patches by applying color mixed with gum. But this sort of repair is only
applicable to parts of the cover away from the edges; in the neighborhood
of the hinges, this unelastic paste will break loose or, at least, render
the book difficult to open.

I experimented also with gutta-percha. This brownish substance has the
property, at a certain temperature (towards seventy degrees)[17] of
melting and adhering to the leather and, on cooling, recovers its natural,
semi-elastic state. But after having been melted at a fire or, if the
season is right, by sunlight through a lens, it turns brown and will not
harmonize in tint except with very dark calf, and I have found no method
of lightening it.

We will now speak of repairing and patching the cover in those parts which
serve as hinges. This is an operation practicable only when a substance
very thin and supple can be found. I have succeeded in restoring this part
of a book by using a strip of gold-beaters skin, slipped between the back
and the side and fastened, on one part, to the edge of the side and, on
the other, to the boards lining the back. I then gave to this skin a tint
corresponding to that of the cover. The break remained visible; I only
reconnected the parts so that the book could be opened and closed.[18]

Would one succeed better by using a thin piece of rubber? I have never
tried this, but this substance, I believe, could not be obtained in very
thin sheets except by being considerably stretched, a process which would
soon destroy the elasticity