out in the gay cloths and gilt moroccos of the miscellaneous bookshelf would give the precedent following lawyer a severe jolt.

A modified jolt has been given, indeed, by the discovery in late years that the traditional sheepskin is not bearing out its reputation for wearing qualities. Books bound a hundred years ago may still be found in good condition, but books bound twenty, ten, or five years ago are probably in need of rebinding to-day. Individual dissatisfaction here and there grew louder and more insistent, and in England it led finally to a thorough and scientific investigation of the situation. An article in the Publisher's Circular (London) shows the feeling that led to this study of the matter.

"For long past," says the writer, "there has been an outcry among the manufacturers and users of books as to the quality of so much of the leather used in bindings. When publishers and others have complained to the binders, the reply has been to blame the leather merchant and the tanner. We are told that it is to modern scientific progress in the manufacture of leather that is due the general characteristic of most of the leather made nowadays, namely, the rapidity with which it rots. Not only book leather, but boot leather, and leather for straps, portmanteaus, etc., has lost most of its ancient fame for durability."

It was in 1899 that an informal meeting of persons specially interested in the question was held at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in Regent Street, under the chairmanship of Mr. CobdenSanderson, the famous binder of beautiful books. The meeting resolved itself into a committee for investigation and experiment. After something like a year's independent work, the Society of Arts interested itself in the matter, incorporated the original investigators in a

committee of its own, and an elaborate report of the work done was turned in by the committee in 1901. The Worshipful Company of Leathersellers contributed generously towards the expense of the republication of the report in an extended form and with illustrations.

The committee was organized under the chairmanship of Lord Cobham, and consisted of five practical bookbinders, including such well-known names as those of Cobden-Sanderson, Zaehnsdorf, and Miss Prideaux; two professors of leather industries; three experienced librarians, including Richard Garnett, C. B., L. L. D., late Keeper of the Department of Printed Books, British Museum; and six others especially interested and qualified, including Dr. J. Gordon Parker, Director of the London Leather Industries Research Laboratories, who wrote the formal report of the committee. The report gives a detailed account of their investigations and experiments, and in a summary, contained in a paper read before the Society of Arts in 1903, Dr. Parker says:

"For many years past there has existed a growing dissatisfaction among librarians and owners of libraries with the quality of the leather used in books. This committee, in its work, visited nine of the most valuable and most important libraries in England, and found generally that most modern leather of all kinds showed signs of decay and in many cases that bindings of not more than ten years already showed marked signs of deterioration and decay. * In many cas

es the books could not be handled without the leather coming off.in the form of dust. dust. In one case the removal of the book from the shelf caused the back to come right off. Generally speaking, most sign of decay was found in libraries where gas was used for light, and it was also found that, approximately, the most

marked form of decay was noticed from 1860 onward."

In the report itself, the conditions are graphically described as follows:

"The new form of decay (since 1830) affects nearly all leathers, and in extreme cases seems absolutely to destroy the fibers. Another form of deterioration, more noticeable in the newer books, renders the grain of the leather liable to peel off when exposed to the slightest friction. This is the most common form of decay noted in the most recent leathers. In nearly all samples of Russia. leather, a very violent form of red decay was noticed. In many cases the leather was found to be absolutely rotten in all parts exposed to light and air, so that on the very slightest rubbing with a blunt instrument the leather fell into fine dust."

The frontispiece of the Report shows seven decrepit volumes which had been newly bound in morocco or calf within fifty years, and which testify to the inability of the outside of the book to match the inside in endurance. The leather has flaked and fallen away in patches, throwing the burden of holding the leaves together entirely upon the binder's boards and twine.

The trouble is admittedly due to two general causes: (1) The modern methods of tanning, dyeing, and preparing leather; (2) the modern conditions of libraries as to lighting and heating. As to the first, one leather merchant put the matter in a nutshell when he said that modern conditions made it necessary to turn a skin into leather in nine days, instead of their having the old allowance. of nine months. It has been found possible, by the use of acids and other devices, to produce a leather in a hurry which looks all right-when new. These inventions and discoveries, each hailed as a great advance in the industrial arts,

have made it impracticable for any leather manufacturer to keep up the old slow and costly methods and continue in business. The process has been shortened, the cost lessened-and the leather ruined.

It is hardly fair to blame the tanner indiscriminately. He may know, as a matter of theory, that the pyrogallol tannins, such as sumach and gall nuts, give better results than the catechol group of tannins, such as the larch, the mimosa, and the acacia; he may guess that the strong acids and alkalies which "the present state of the art" calls for are harmful to the fiber; but who is the average tanner that he should choose to be a reformer and a bankrupt? The way in which present conditions are taken for granted in the trade is indicated in an address delivered in 1907 before the Employing Binders of New York City:

"Bark tannage in sheep is used in the book-binding trade for law sheep and some roan. This makes it one of the most used leathers in the binding trade. It does not wear very well, however, being very soft, and in a few years breaks off and crumbles whenever touched. These skins have really no oil in them."

These results are then accepted as a necessary evil, like the weather.

A. Seymour-Jones, one of the leather manufacturers on the Committee, protests that the trouble is "entirely due to the speed at which people now live. With the increased output of printing presses and the steady demand for that literature, leather manufacturers had to face a problem of how to supply a cheap leather binding."

Well, they did solve their problem, at

any rate.

The second destructive agency, like the first, is due to the way in which we liveand which we probably will not consent to change, even to save our bindings! Air and light alone are bad for modern

tanned leather. Air and light with gas fumes added are worse. The addition of tobacco smoke makes a destroying combination which would not need the reinforcement of overheating to make its effect complete; yet we do not withhold that final thrust. Our libraries, like the rooms we live in, are apt to be too hot, too cold, too dry, too moist, in turn; and the books cannot save themselves.

Mr. C. Whitwell, librarian of the Central Library, London, England, says, in the West Haven Electrical Bulletin:

"The sulphurous fumes from gas are said to attack all classes of leather bindings, especially Russia leathers and calfskins, rendering them liable in a comparatively short time to 'crumble' at the slightest touch. Of course, there are other agencies at work, besides the products of gas combustion, that have a destructive effect on the bindings of books, such as the pollution of the atmosphere by the burning of coal, dampness, excessive heat from the rays of the sun, or from a room being badly ventilated, also the use of sulphuric acid by the tanners in preparing the leather for the binders. Many of the books in our various public libraries were first collected and stored in Old Rokeby House. Gas was used all over this house. When the time came to move the books to their new homes, it was found that a number of volumes bound in calf had suffered so much from the gas fumes that the bindings were irretrievably ruined. When they were handled, the leather absolutely crumbled into dust, and looked something like Scotch snuff. Most librarians will, I think, agree with me that leather loses all its natural oil by long exposure to the excessive heat that results from burning gas in any place where books are stored." The London Daily News in 1905 published an interview with a prominent bookbinder of London, who said:

"We do not tan to-day as they tanned in olden days; and the trouble comes partly from the tanning, partly from the acid dyeing, and partly from the altered conditions under which books live. No leather, however good, will stand years of exposure to the fumes of gas. The atmosphere of towns is generally bad for leather-bound books, especially when they are left undisturbed on the bookshelves. The fumes act chemically on the leather, and set up sulphuric acid. Naturally, where there is already sulphuric acid in the leather, the process of decay is much more rapid. I know of only one firm which professes to sell. leather absolutely innocent of acid. They all use acid; some more, some less."

The binder showed the interviewer a number of hides of the pleasantly odorous "Russia" leather, tanned in London. It was so rotten that it would tear like paper, and the surface would break beneath the thumb nail. "That," said the bookbinder, "has not been on my premises more than a year. I suppose it has not been tanned for longer than fifteen months at the outside. It costs me close upon 2s. a square foot-and it is useless."

In this country there has been no such formal investigation of the situation as that given by our painstaking and scientific cousins across the water; but the same conditions exist here. It is, indeed, characteristic of the American temper that the recognition of the trouble should be individual and independent, and that the suggestion of a remedy should go hand in hand with the arraignment. Mr. Edwin Gholsox, Librarian of the Cincinnati Law Library Association, has gone on record in the following statement:

"The law libraries of the country are now facing a very serious problem. The income of most of them is limited; hence, if the larger part of their available funds

is spent for rebindings, the number of new books which they are able to purchase is correspondingly decreased.

"It is no exaggeration for me to say, for it is based upon my own experience here, that approximately one-fourth of the income of every large law library in the country is absolutely and needlessly wasted, and that this sum might be saved to them and put to a much better use if the law book publishers would only adopt a good grade of cloth or buckram binding, instead of the 'law sheep' they now use. The life of the best of this law sheep, exposed on open shelves to the action of an atmosphere laden with the gases thrown off in the combustion of either soft or hard coal, averages less than four years, while a good article of cloth binding, subject to the same conditions, will last indefinitely. Some eight years ago, when I took charge of this library, my first innovation was to substitute a heavy canvas instead of the law sheep that had been used on our rebindings.

Out of the ten thousand volumes bound in this material now on the shelves, only one single volume has gone back to the bindery, and this upon a book which was subjected to the most constant and severe use. Of the new books which have come in during the same period, and which were bound in law sheep, fully one-fifth have already had new bindings, and hundreds of others are in a condition requiring it."

Dr. G. E. Wire, Deputy Librarian of the Worcester County Law Library, Massachusetts, has given the subject careful study. In his Report of 1902 he gives an interesting review of the development of the present situation:

"The older English reports, abridgments, and text-books were bound in full English calfskin, tanned by hand, done on honor, largely using vegetable materials, and consuming weeks and months.

in the curing of the skins. As time wore on, sheepskin began to be used, and these skins were tanned and cured in the same manner as were calfskins, the difference in wearing quality being but little in favor of the calfskin over the sheepskin. Both were used down to about 1825, not only for law books but for all books, so small was the book production of that time compared with the present.

"About this time, both in England and America, cloth began to be used for binding of books in history, literature, and general works, and cloth continues. to be used in England. * * In the United States, cloth grew in favor as a binding material, and became the permanent binding for all classes of literature, except law, medicine, and theology. These three classes still clung to calf or sheep full binding. Now medicine is offered in half morocco as an alternative binding, and theology is largely in cloth. Through all these years law has clung

to leather, more so in this country than in England, for the English publishers have been sending out their law books in cloth cases for the last twenty years. * A cloth binding will stand on the shelf under the influence of gas, light, and superheated air for years in good condition. A leather binding, particularly calf or sheep, will rot out in a few years under the same conditions. Morocco will endure longer than sheepskin, for the modern sheepskin is, without doubt, the worst covering put on books at this time. All woolly skins are weaker than hairy skins, to begin with, and the process of tanning is a cheaper one with sheepskin than with calfskin or goatskin. Furthermore, the skin of an immature animal is weaker than that of a mature animal. Calfskin is that of an immature animal, and is not so strong as goatskin, which

is from a mature animal. Mineral acids, used in tanning sheepskins, are not sufficiently cleared or neutralized,* and the remaining acid, especially when assisted by strong daylight, gas, and superheated air, soon reduces the skin to powder. The mineral acids are used to some extent in tanning the poorer grades of morocco, especially the dark colors, and with much the same effect. The better grades of morocco are tanned with vegetable agents, and expensive dressings used in finishing them. Furthermore, all of these skins, calf, sheep, and morocco, are split in process of tanning and curing, and are thus deprived of much of their strength. * The larger

publishers, as a general thing, use better materials and do better work than do the smaller publishers. The state printers, as a rule, under the contract system, use the poorest materials and do the worst work."

The Superintendent of Documents at Washington says, in a published report: "In libraries where bituminous coal is used, sheep binding is soon reduced to a powder by the action of heat and gas." The recently formed American Association of Law Libraries took this subject up for consideration at its meeting in 1907, and adopted a resolution requesting publishers of reports, digests, etc., to bind a sufficient number in buckram to supply the libraries preferring that kind of binding. This resolution was restated in 1908, as shown by the report of the Binding Committee:

*The investigations of the Society of Arts Committee showed that sulphuric or other similar acids so unite with the fibers of the skin that it is not possible by any known process to wholly clear or neutralize them, and that they, must ultimately have a destructive effect on the leather. The Committee also found that "sulphuric acid is in almost universal use, either as a brightening agent or to liberate the dye in the dye-bath." Also in the natural gas regions.

"The Committee on Binding of the American Association of Law Libraries, in its report submitted at the third annual meeting at Minnetonka, especially recommends cloth for law bindings. The two most commonly used in this country are buckram and duck. The United States government has lately decided on a buckram as the binding for its depository set of documents. Any cloth will last and wear better than sheep, and in the opinion of this committee it is only a question of time when all of our state reports will be bound in cloth. Our textbooks are now coming in cloth, and this committee has been in correspondence with the publishers of state reports, asking for cloth binding on such state reports. We have now a list of 44 such reports which are promised in cloth. Several states expressed their preference for cloth, but could not change the binding on account of the law or their contracts. They, however, hoped to change these contracts or laws at the next session of their Legislatures. The leading law-publishing firms in this country have, with one exception, promised to give us cloth on their reports.

"G. E. Wire, "Chairman Binding Committee, American Association of Law Libraries." The English Committee's report closed with numerous recommendations to binders and suggestions to librarians, which, if followed, would result in the abandonment of all injurious methods of tanning; but the American Committee evidently agreed with the cynical investigator, who said that durable leather was produced in the days when tanners knew less about chemistry than they do now. Hopeless of persuading the tanners to forget this impious knowledge, they are willing to abandon the theory that the law book, like the judge, must wear a