Transcriber's Note
The Book Cover has been constructed by the transcriber and placed in the Public Domain.
Sundry missing or damaged punctuation has been repaired.
Both hyphenated and non-hyphenated variants of many words occur in this book. All have been retained.
This book has some older spellings or grammatical constructions, which have been retained. Though published Philadelphia 1878, parts of the book date from 1856, and would thus appear to pre-date modern American spelling conventions. (See note on the Catalogue advertisements which were placed after the Index.)
Any illustration which interrupted a paragraph was moved to a more convenient location, between paragraphs.
There is some discrepancy between the TOC and the book's layout. Some rationalization has been attempted.
'Blank work' appears to refer to blank book-keeping books sold by stationers for use in business offices.
Pages 18-19, 67: Derome also appears as De Rome. (Index: Derome)
Page 23: 'him' and 'self' re-joined over line-break.
"Many of these he made himself of iron,..."
Page 57: 'Societé' corrected to 'Société'.
"... in a Memoir presented by him to the "Société d' Encouragement,"
Page 78: 'faustic chips'; 'faustic' would appear to be correct. From [http://www.] faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/botany/tandye.htm#fusticdyes "Tanning" ... "Wood Dyes" ... "Fustic":
This is the main source of natural yellows, olives and browns and ranks with logwood in importance. It is used for leather and in combination with logwood for silk, wool, nylon and rayon. It comes from the heartwood of Chlorophora tinctoria, a forest tree of the West Indies, Central and South America. The light-yellow wood turns a dark yellow-brown when exposed to air.
Faustic is exported as short logs, chips, powder or paste. The dye is frequently called Old Fustic to distinguish it from Young Fustic, once obtained from the twigs of Cotinus coggygria."
Page 128: 'papier D'Anonay', should perhaps be 'papier D'Annonay'. Also Page 150, so perhaps 'papier D'Anonay' was an accepted spelling (in the bookbinding trade) at the time of publication.
Page 151: 'STATIONERY OR VELLUM BINDING.' is 'Blank Binding' in TOC (p. 7).
Page 181: "... but the character of the ornaments are generally dissimilar." is as printed, though the author does seem to have confused his tenses.
Page 203: 'anti-tiquities' corrected to 'antiquities' - letters duplicated at line-break.
"... and illustrate the history, laws, customs, and antiquities,..."
Pages 214-5: Plate 8.: 'Pattern's' corrected to 'Patterns'.
"Selection from Gaskill, Copper & Fry's Book of Patterns"
Page 237 (also pp. 244, 246, 246. 250, 251, 252, 258, and Index): 'AQUA REGII' corrected to 'AQUA REGIA' ('royal water' or 'king's water'), a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid (The transcriber could not find any reference to 'aqua regii', and assumes it to be a spelling error by either the author or the printer.).
'nitrous acid' corrected to 'nitric acid', which appears in the next paragraph.
"So called from its power to dissolve gold, is a mixture of nitric acid (aquafortis) and muriatic acid, (spirits of salts,)...."
Page 244: 'OHANGE' corrected to 'ORANGE'.
Page 289: If you have an older browser which does not display Latin reversed 'c', here is a workaround, using instead Latin small letter open 'o' (which looks a bit similar):
TRANSLATION OF DATES.
Many old books have their dates printed in a manner which puzzles the finisher, should he be required to date any so printed, which are too thin to admit of its being done as on the title-page. The following key is here given, as it may be found useful in such cases:—c. 100; Iɔ, or d, 500; cIɔ or m, 1000; Iɔɔ, 5000; ccIɔɔ, 10,000; Iɔɔɔ, 50,000, cccIɔɔɔ, 100,000. Thus, cIɔ, Iɔ, clxxxviii—1688. While on this subject, it may not be inappropriate to notice the dating of some books printed in France during the republic in that country. Thus, "An. xiii."—1805, that being the thirteenth year of the republic, which commenced in 1792.
Page 313 et seq.: Some Index entries which had been transposed have been returned to their correct places.
The dashes (——) in the index have been replaced by double spaces, making it a simple nested list.
INDEX:
'Antique Dutch': Page number corrected from 29 to 123 (No 29.)
'Maiolo, 17' corrected to 'Maioli, 18'. (also later occurrence)
'Carved oak boards, description of, 12, 211'.
'precious stones let into, 12, 14.
P. 211 had been incorrectly assigned to 'precious stones let into', and the 'precious stones' are mentioned on pp. 12 and 14.
'Edges, Burnishing': P. 125 corrected to 126.
'Forwarding': p. 72 corrected to 73.
'Hints to Book Collectors': p. 291 corrected to 292.
'Mahogany sprinkle on leather': P. 252 corrected to 253.
'Marbled cloth': p. 127 corrected to 128.
'Turning up': p. 72 corrected to 73.
CATALOGUE:
Page 1, et seq.: Catalogue of Practical and Scientific Books (etc.): MM is an abbreviation for Messieurs. Abbreviations for technical and professional qualifications, etc. are not always consistently spaced. They have been retained as printed.
Prices for books have been retained, as printed. Those less than $1.00, with a couple of exceptions (50cts,) are printed, e.g. 63, 75, etc., aligned right.
The spelling in the descriptions of books in the Catalogue sometimes depended on whether the author was American or English.
The word 'Price' appears only in the description of one book. It has been retained.
Page 13: The price was omitted from two of Miss Leslie's books.