then cut the proper size by the broad thin knife of the "finisher," and carefully laid over the sized spot to receive the lettering. Usually, two thicknesses of gold leaf are laid one above another, which ensures a brighter and more decided effect in the lettering. The type metal or die is then pressed firmly and evenly down upon the gold-leaf, and the surplus shavings of the gold carefully brushed off and husbanded, for this leaf is worth money. The gold leaf generally in use costs about $6.50 for 500 little squares or sheets. It is almost inconceivably thin, the thickness of one gold leaf being estimated at about 1/280000 of an inch. Besides the lettering, many books receive gold ornamentation on the back or side of a more or less elaborate character. Designs of great artistic beauty, and in countless variety, have been devised for book ornaments, and French and English book-binders have vied with each other for generations in the production of decorative borders, fillets, centre-pieces, rolls, and the most exquisite gold-tooling, of which the art is capable. These varied patterns of book ornamentation are cut in brass or steel, and applied by the embossing press with a rapidity far exceeding that of the hand-work formerly executed by the gilders of books. But for choice books and select jobs, only the hands are employed, with such fillets, stamps, pallets, rolls, and polishing irons as may aid in the nice execution of the work. If a book is to be bound in what is called "morocco antique," it is to be "blind-tooled," _i. e._: the hot iron wheels which impress the fillets or rolls, are to be worked in blank, or without gold-leaf ornamentation. This is a rich and tasteful binding, especially with carefully beveled boards, and gilded edges.