as the stains are from grease or from ink.  Here is where an unpractised binder will probably injure a book for life.  If the chemicals are too strong, or the sheets remain too long in the bath, or are not thoroughly cleansed from the bleach before they are re-sized, the certain seeds of decay are planted in the paper, and although for a time the leaves may look bright to the eye, and even crackle under the hand like the soundest paper, yet in the course of a few years the enemy will appear, the fibre will decay, and the existence of the books will terminate in a state of white tinder.

Everything which diminishes the interest of a book is inimical to its preservation, and in fact is its enemy.  Therefore, a few words upon the destruction of old bindings.

I remember purchasing many years ago at a suburban book stall, a perfect copy of Moxon’s Mechanic Exercises, now a scarce work.  The volumes were uncut, and had the original marble covers.  They looked so attractive in their old fashioned dress, that I at once determined to preserve it.  My binder soon made for them a neat wooden box in the shape of a book, with morocco back properly lettered, where I trust the originals will be preserved from dust and injury for many a long year.

Old covers, whether boards or paper, should always be retained if in any state approaching decency.  A case, which can be embellished to any extent looks every whit as well upon the shelf! and gives even greater protection than binding.  It has also this great advantage:  it does not deprive your descendants of the opportunity of seeing for themselves exactly in what dress the book buyers of four centuries ago received their volumes.

CHAPTER IX.

COLLECTORS.

AFTER all, two-legged depredators, who ought to have known better, have perhaps done as much real damage in libraries as any other enemy.  I do not refer to thieves, who, if they injure the owners, do no harm to the books themselves by merely transferring them from one set of bookshelves to another.  Nor do I refer to certain readers who frequent our public libraries, and, to save themselves the trouble of copying, will cut out whole articles from magazines or encyclopaedias.  Such depredations are not frequent, and only occur with books easily replaced, and do not therefore call for more than a passing mention; but it is a serious matter when Nature produces such a wicked old biblioclast as John Bagford, one of the founders of the Society of Antiquaries, who, in the beginning of the last century, went about the country, from library to library, tearing away title pages from rare books of all sizes.  These he sorted out into nationalities and towns, and so, with a lot of hand-bills, manuscript notes, and miscellaneous collections of all kinds, formed over a hundred folio volumes, now preserved in the British Museum.  That they are of service as