Fottings. It may be well to remind Library Committees that three-quarters of a million will shortly be divided among the County Councils in aid of technical education, and that there is no reason why applications for appropriations should not be made to expend on works of a purely technical and scientific character. Mr. Gladstone's visit to the Edinburgh Public Library is still providing valuable "copy" for paragraphists, and even the magazines work up articles out of the interesting event. In Murray's Magazine the Edinburgh demand for fiction is compared with the average of England to the disparagement of the southron, whose reading is composed of 86 per cent. of fiction, while his northern brother confines himself to theology and "metapheesics," with a paltry excursion into fiction to the extent of 47 per cent. Such comparisons are not "odious" they are simply silly. Has Murray's contributor endeavoured to discover the relative conditions of the libraries he is comparing? How the Edinburgh stock of fiction and especially of three-volume novels compares with the fiction stock of the older libraries, and the time allowed for reading by each institution whose returns he has dealt with? The Edinburgh library has Minerva-like sprung into existence completely armed—the older English libraries have grown. We know of some who still use the three-volume editions of even Scott's novels. We question if a single copy of these early editions exists in the Edinburgh library. But if John Robinson takes out Ivanhoe it is counted against him as three, while if Rabbie Thamson calls for the same book it is charged as one. The Parliamentary Return of Places which have adopted the Acts down to March of 1890, moved for by Mr. Leng, M.P., has been issued. Are we to estimate the accuracy of Parliamentary papers on subjects we don't know, according to their correctness on matters we do know something of? If so, the result is melancholy, for here we have a blue book prepared with all the expensive machinery at the disposal of a government department, and upon which many months and much labour has been spent, and it simply bristles with errors. The information obtainable from The Library Chronicle and The Library would have given a more trustworthy result at the expense of a single clerk for a month! A correspondent in the South London Press, waxing hot on the subject of Sunday opening, drops into poetry :— Ye Sabbatarian hypocrites, Who wants to hear ye preach ? The toiler wants his books to teach Not hid in their cases out of reach Through the worker's day, till the Monday morn, A correspondent writes :-"At the time when the present Keeper of the Printed Books at the British Museum composed his Latin reasons why a book could not be found, I was privileged to see them in MS., and amused myself by trying to put some of them into monkish verse. The attempt was not very successful, but I send a copy in case you think it would interest any readers of The Library." Certe librum hunc habemus, Nam ministri sapientes, Non ex hoc, o studiosus, Neque dicas, furiosus, Scribam mox ad Tempora. Vel ministri juniores, Inter quos jucundiores Alios putent, hunc, o mores, Vel, ut dicunt, concinnatus, Ut, et matri e qua natus, "Ecce vir placabilis." THE LIBRARY CHRONICLE. List of Places where the Public Libraries Acts have been adopted, with Dates of Adoption. Record of Bibliography and Library Literature. Die deutschen Bücherzeichen (Ex-Libris) von ihrem Ursprunge bis zur Gegenwart. Von F. Warnecke. Mit... 21. Abbildungen im Text und 26 Tafeln. Berlin, 1890. Verlag von 7. A. Stargardt. Svo. pp. 255. Les Ex-Libris et les Marques de Possession du Livre. Par Henri Bouchot du Cabinet des Estampes. Paris, Bibliothèque des Connaissances utiles aux Amis des Livres, Edouard Rouveyre, éditeur, 1891. (Nov., 1890.) 8vo. pp. 104. 6 francs. Of the two books before us Herr Warnecke's was the first published and also claims prior attention on account of its greater size. It consists mainly of a descriptive list of some hundreds of German book-plates, arranged in the alphabetical order of their owner's names, prefaced by a brief history of the book-plate, especially in Germany where it was first used. The volume is completed by a list of designers and engravers and Herr by twenty-six plates, each containing facsimiles of one or more bookplates of interest, either on their own account, or, as in the case of Goethe, from the reputation of their owners. The alphabetical list, which occupies the greater part of the book, appears to us of rather doubtful value. For amateurs interested in the development of the book-plate, a chronological arrangement would have been preferable; for ordinary collectors, a heraldic order would have helped towards the identification of unknown plates; and, certainly, to the present arrangement the addition of an heraldic index, on the plan of that in Guigard's Armorial, is almost a necessity. The list, as it stands, is useful for verifying knowledge already gained, but for very little else. Warnecke's introduction, though not very long, is of considerable interest. He alludes briefly, as to precursors of the book-plate proper, to the portrait of the Emperor Frederick I. in a work dedicated to him in 1188, now preserved in the Vatican Library; and also to the coats-ofarms painted in many Italian manuscripts in the first half of the fourteenth century as a mark of ownership. The oldest printed book-plate found in a book in its proper place appears to be a small painted woodcut of an angel holding a shield, on which is displayed a black ox with a silver ring passed through his nose. This book-plate was long assigned to the Abbey of Ochsenhausen in Swabia, but Herr Warnecke shows that the arms really belonged to Hildebrand Brandenburg aus Biberach, by whom the volume was presented to the Carthusian Monastery of Buxhain in Memmingen. The probable date of the plate is about 1480, and another, the property of Willem de Zell, also a benefactor to the Monastery, is assigned to about the same period. Earlier than either of these, but deserving of less honour because divorced from its true position, is a book-plate belonging to a certain Johannes Knabensperg alias Igler, found in the binder's waste of an undated Vocabularium incipiens teutonicum ante latinum. It is unfortunately coloured, but is apparently printed from a block, and represents a brown hedgehog trampling over ground strewn with leaves, and with a flower in its, mouth. Above the hedgehog is the legend, "Hans igler das dich ein igel kuss," meaning, we presume, that to the stealer of his book Hans Igler's kiss would be as sharp as a hedgehog's. Herr Warnecke assigns this book-plate to about 1450, putting the book in which it was found, rather vaguely, as "some ten years later." It figures as the first of his illustrations, all of which are interesting, though few possess much real beauty. In his list, however, of designers and engravers we note the names of Jost Amman, Albert Durer, Holbein and Lucas Cranach, though the attributions do not appear to be always made with certainty. M. Bouchot's little book is a work of far less labour than Herr Warnecke's, but to the humbler sort of amateur it is likely to be both more useful and more pleasing. It is charmingly printed, sufficiently illustrated and pleasantly written. M. Bouchot has no respect for bookplates, though he writes about them, and as for the collectors of them it is with difficulty he restrains the expression of his lofty scorn. The collection in sixty volumes in the Bibliothèque Nationale reminds him of nothing but the tombs in a cemetery, and towards the end of his work he even launches a comparison of their collectors to the amassers of postage stamps (a wholly inferior class of person) which no lover of bookplates will easily forgive. Yet there is something noble in this scorn. Grollier never used a bookplate, nor did Maioli, nor De Thou, nor any of the greatest French or Italian book lovers. These princes of the book-world stamped their arms and their mottoes in gold on the bindings of their books, and this M. Bouchot hints is the proper course for a gentleman to pursue. Bookplates, bits of paper affixed with paste or gum, are the |