The scarcity and value of our early specimens are not appreciated fully by our brother-collectors over the sea, nor is our national pride in keeping them within our borders realized. Having so few, we cannot be lavish with the rare examples we are able to find; and so it comes about that the demand for our plates is not met as it once was. The book-plates of our ancestors are not so easily found as are those of the past generation in the older countries. Books were fewer here, devastation by fire and pillage has ruined much that we lament over, and the good old plates turn up but rarely now. Our collections are not large as compared with the gigantic aggregations which we hear of as being made in England. Think of one collector having one hundred thousand specimens! The largest collection here will not exceed six thousand, and those next nearest to that fall some two thousand behind it. Our collections are good, representative of the best foreign styles and dates, and do not include much that is valueless. “Small, if need be, in numbers, but excellent in quality,” would seem to be the maxim of those who collect over here. German plates, particularly of the oldest engravers, French plates, and the English plates of men of prominence, are well represented. Plain heraldic plates are not held in high esteem, while the Pictorial, Literary, Library Interior, and Ladies’ plates are all sought for. Among the very first to enter the field as a collector of book-plates in the United States was the late James Eddy Mauran, of Newport, R.I. Mr. Mauran was a New Yorker by birth, the son of a West India merchant. He was a painstaking collector, a close student, and a man fully acquainted with the foreign languages, and the literature of the times he felt an especial interest in. While deeply interested in other lines of research and collecting, he found time to gather a good collection of American and foreign book-plates, which were mounted with the nicety and taste shown in all branches of his collecting. At the time of his death, in 1888, he had about 3500 plates in all, and they were appraised by Mr. Hewins, a friend of Mr. Mauran, at three hundred dollars, and were sold to a Philadelphia gentleman. Mr. Mauran had a way of mounting his plates which was original and unique. He pasted them down on pieces of marbled paper, and other kinds of paper used in the ornamental binding of books. He was at pains to obtain from binders, stationers, and booksellers all the pieces of paper of this kind that could be found, in order to have as many different mounts as possible. These papers were all mounted on stiffer white paper, and formed a good substantial ground for the final mounting.