A piece of plain waste paper or part cover should be placed on each side of the beating, to preserve the first and last section from actual contact with the stone or the hammer.

Before commencing to beat a book, the operator should refer to the date at the foot of the title-page, to ascertain when it

was printed. This is necessary, because, if recently-printed books are exposed to very heavy beating, they will probably "set-off"; that is to say, the ink lines will be partly impressed on the opposite pages, thus rendering the printing more or less illegible, and much impairing the appearance of the book. New books should be beaten very cautiously.

If the amateur has not provided himself with a beating hammer and stone, he may make shift by screwing up the knocking-down iron in the end of the laying press, as at Fig. 34, and beating his books thereon with the "backing hammer." This is, of course only a very inferior makeshift; still, the work may be done so.

In all tolerably large establishments the rolling-machine has superseded the beating-hammer for many years past. Of this machine we have given an illustration. It consists essentially of two large smooth-surfaced iron cylinders, between which the books are passed; it is provided with an apparatus by which the rollers or cylinders can be brought together or set further apart; it does its work well and quickly. The operator sets the rollers at what he considers a suitable distance asunder, then takes a number of sections and places them between a pair of tin plates of corresponding size, and puts them to the rollers, while an assistant turns the handle. The plates and sections are caught by the rollers and drawn between them, and are received by the assistant as they emerge at the other side. Precautions against "setting-off" are as necessary with the rolling-machine as with the beating-hammer.

We may here remark that of late years a new kind of book illustration has come into vogue which needs special precautions.

We allude to the "chromo" plates, such as those issued with the Leisure Hour, Sunday at Home, &c. The colored inks and oil colors used in printing these are very slow in drying. This is especially the case with the dark broom used in the shadows (probably asphaltum), which seems as if it would never dry; and if such a plate were inserted in its place before the book were beaten or rolled, it would be found to have adhered to the opposite page so tenaciously that it would be impossible to separate them. These plates must, therefore, never be "placed" until the book has been through these operations; but this is not all. They will even "stick" from the other ordinary pressure the book will have to go through. It is therefore necessary that, after each plate is placed, the binder put a piece of waste paper in front of it, to guard against sticking; though, in all probability, when the book is bound, he will not be able to get even this waste paper off without the use of moisture, which is objectionable. Perhaps, proper-sized pieces of the ordinary oiled tracing paper would answer better, although we have not personally made the experiment.

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