outside the window, what we thought was an
_Antiopa_. We rushed out, and when we came back we found that the
cat. . . . Dear me; I was quite overcome. . . . But that summer I caught
the one you have seen in Switzerland; and as my dear friend was no more
and nobody else knew of the catastrophe, I thought there would be no harm
in merely restoring a specimen to my grandfather's collection.'

But the bookman pointed out to him that when he died and his collection
was sold his family would benefit by some pounds through his
indiscretion; for it was now known to all his friends as a genuine
English specimen. This troubled the entomologist greatly, for it was a
point of view that had never occurred to him, and, like the rich young
man, 'he went away grieved.'

So it is sometimes in book-collecting: there is a temptation to 'restore'
an incomplete book. Should the collector find that his copy of a certain
work lacks a portrait, what is more natural than to go to the print-shop
and purchase a portrait of the same individual for insertion in his copy?
And in this there may be little harm, provided that the book is of no
value _and that he makes a note in ink inside the front cover as to what
he has done_. But occasionally some unscrupulous book-fiend--he is, of
course, no true book-collector--substitutes for a damaged page a page
from another copy, or perhaps of a later edition; sometimes he supplies
his volume with a spurious title-page or other leaf; and, worst of all,
substitutes in his copy of the second edition, whereof the title-page is
damaged, the title-page of a first edition, of which he possesses an
incomplete copy.

And here let me utter a word of warning. Apparently it is the practice of
certain cheap second-hand booksellers to abstract the engraved plates
from folio books, occasionally also removing the 'List of Plates' that
the theft may remain undiscovered, and to sell the works thus mutilated
as sound and perfect copies. Needless to say to the print collector such
plates are invariably worth a shilling or two apiece, if portraits
considerably more. I know to my cost one London bookseller who habitually
removes the engraved portraits with which certain seventeenth-century
folios, especially historical ones, are wont to be embellished. How many
rare volumes this ghoul has ruined it is impossible to say, probably some
hundreds. Our book-hunter confesses to having been caught by him three
times, discovering the re