a binder's tool upon a fragment
of binding may identify a volume and its previous owners. Some years ago
the writer purchased an ancient folio without title-page and colophon,
bound in tattered fragments of ancient calf covering stout oak boards.
There was, apparently, nothing to indicate when, where, or by whom the
volume was printed or bound, or whence it came. But from a certain
peculiarity in the type (which he noticed when studying the early
printers of Nuernberg) he now knows the name of the printer and the town
in which he plied his trade; while from a certain woodcut which that
printer used also in two other _dated_ works only, _both printed the same
year_, he discovered when the volume in all probability was printed.

A scrutiny of the remains of the binding revealed the blind impressions
of four different stamps. As these occur frequently in conjunction upon
the bindings executed by the monks at a certain monastery in Germany in
the sixteenth century, there is little difficulty in assigning a
_provenance_ to the volume. Furthermore the initial H in a heart-shaped
impression identifies the binder as a monk whose initials H.G. (on two
heart-shaped tools) are of frequent occurrence on contemporary volumes at
that time in the possession of the monastery.

Needless to say, it has _not_ been rebound. The tattered pieces of skin
have been carefully pasted down, and a case--lettered on the back--now
contains the book upon his shelf.[45]

In the case, however, of more recent books bound in tattered or perished
calf, books of which one may obtain duplicates at any time, except they
be works of extreme value there is no reason why they should not be
re-bound. Even here, however, the collector must tread warily; for
should he send his copy of Tim Bobbin's Lancashire dialogue of _Tummus
and Meary_ to the binders with brief instruction that it is to be bound
in full morocco, it may be returned to him in all the splendour of a
sixteenth-century Florentine binding.

With regard to books published in cardboard covers with paper backs and
paper labels, what is to be done with these when the backs are dirty or
torn off, the labels of some volumes missing? Must they be re-bound in
leather or cloth? Not necessarily, and I for my part maintain that the
delightful ease which one experiences in handling them when reading the
early editions of Byron, Scott, or Irving, and those writers who
flourished in the first few decades of th