Lastly, we have the morocco leather, so called because it was brought from Morocco, in Africa, and still we get the best from thence, and from the Mediterranean ports of the Levant--whence comes another name for the best of this favorite leather, "Levant morocco," which is the skin of the mountain goat, and reckoned superior to all other leathers. The characteristics of the genuine morocco, sometimes called Turkey morocco, having a pebbled grain, distinguishing it from the smooth morocco, are its toughness and durability, combined with softness and flexibility. It has a very tenacious fibre, and I have never found a real morocco binding broken at the hinges. The old proverb--"there is nothing like leather"--is pregnant with meaning, and especially applies to the best morocco. As no material yet discovered in so many ages can take the place of leather for foot-wear and for harness, such is its tenacity and elasticity--so for book coverings, to withstand wear and tear, good leather is indispensable. There are thoroughly-bound books existing which are five centuries old--representing about the time when leather began to replace wood and metals for binding. The three great enemies of books are too great heat, too much moisture, and coal gas, which produces a sulphurous acid very destructive to bindings, and should never be used in libraries. From the dangers which destroy calf and Russia leather, morocco is measurably free. As to color, I usually choose red for books which come to binding or rebinding, for these reasons. The bulk of every library is of dark and sombre color, being composed of the old-fashioned calf bindings, which grow darker with age, mingled with the cloth bindings of our own day, in which dark colors predominate. Now the intermixture of red morocco, in all or most of the newly bound books, relieves the monotony of so much blackness, lights up the shelves, and gives a more cheerful aspect to the whole library. Some there are who insist upon varying the colors of bindings with the subjects of the books--and the British Museum Library actually once bound all works on botany in green, poetry in yellow, history in red, and theology in blue; but this is more fanciful than important. A second reason for preferring red in moroccos is that, being dyed with cochineal, it holds its color more permanently than any other--the moroccos not colored red turning to a dingy, disagreeable brown after forty or fifty years, while the red are found to be fast colors. This was first discovered in the National Library of France, and ever since most books in that great collection have been bound in red. A celebrated binder having recommended this color to a connoisseur who was having fine morocco binding done, instanced the example of the Paris Library, whose books, said he, are "mostly red," to which the amateur replied that he hoped they were.