Almost the whole historical claim of the engraved metal types, indeed, turns on the recurrence of the term “sculptus” in the colophons of the early printers. Jenson, in 1471, calls himself a “cutter of books” (librorum exsculptor). Sensenschmid, in 1475, says that the _Codex Justinianus_ is “cut” (insculptus), and that he has “cut” (sculpsit) the work of _Lombardus in Psalterium_. Husner of Strasburg, in 1472, applies the term “printed with letters cut of metal” (exsculptis {8} ære litteris) to the _Speculum Durandi_; and of the _Præceptorium Nideri_, printed in 1476, he says it is “printed in letters cut of metal by a very ingenious effort” (litteris exsculptis artificiali certe conatu ex ære). As Dr. Van der Linde points out, the use of the term in reference to all these books can mean nothing else than a figurative allusion to the first process towards producing the types, namely, the cutting of the punch[16]; just as when Schoeffer, in 1466, makes his _Grammatica Vetus Rhythmica_ say, “I am cast at Mentz” (At Moguntia sum fusus in urbe libellus), he means nothing more than a figurative allusion to the casting of the types. The theory of the sculpto-fusi types appears to have sprung up on no firmer foundation than the difficulty of accounting for the marked irregularities in the letters of the earliest printed books, and the lack of a theory more feasible than that of movable wood type to account for it. The method suggested by Meerman seemed to meet the requirements of the case, and with the aid of the very free translation of Trithemius’ story, and the very literal translation of certain colophons, it managed to get a footing on the typographical records. Mr. Skeen seriously applies himself to demonstrate how the shanks could be cast in clay moulds stamped with a number of trough-like matrices representing the various widths of the blanks required, and calculates that at the rate of four a day, 6,000 of these blanks could be engraved on the end by one man in five years, the whole weighing 100 lb. when finished! “No wonder,” Mr. Skeen naïvely observes, “that Fust at last grew impatient.” We must confess that there seems less ground for believing in the use of “sculpto-fusi” types as the means by which any of the early books were produced, than in the perforated wood types. The enormous labour involved, in itself renders the idea improbable. As M. Bernard says, “How can we suppose that intelligent men like the first printers would not at once find out that they could easily cast the face and body of their types together?”[17] But admitting the possibility of producing type in this manner, and the possible obtuseness which could allow an inventor of printing to spend five years in laboriously engraving “shanks” enough for a single forme, the lack of any satisfactory evidence that such types were ever used, even experimentally, inclines us to deny them any place in the history of the origin of typography.