have all suffered the loss of books by fire, while many smaller private libraries have been thus devastated. Mr. John Pintard used to say that he had seen the British soldiers carrying away books from the library of Columbia College to barter for grog, and a similar fate from similar hands overtook many of the books stored in the belfry-chamber of the Old South Church, Boston, while later in our history, worse depredations were committed in the Southern cities by soldiers, who took the liberty which war accords to contestants, to despoil many a building, both public and private, ruining books, records, paintings, and other property of antiquarian and historical value. So that the early American plates, at the first not so very numerous, have been reduced at times by wholesale measures. A second item of interest to the collector is the signature of the engraver of the plate. Signed plates have a value over those which are not signed. The identification of a plate, or the determination of its age, may be considerably strengthened if the engraver’s name appears upon the copper. Then, too, the name of a famous engraver lends much additional interest to a plate. A book-plate signed by Paul Revere arrests the attention of any observer at once, and establishes a value to the same. Likewise a plate signed by Hurd, Doolittle, Dawkins, Anderson, Maverick, Callender, or Turner is worth much more to the collector than one of equal age but of unknown workmanship. Dated plates also rank among the more valuable examples. A glance at the chronological list will show how small a number of these we can boast: many of those appearing in the list, too, are simply printed name-labels, which do not rank as high as the more pretentious specimens. Our very earliest dated example is the label of the _Rev. John Williams_, 1679, the first minister in Deerfield, Mass., and who with his wife and children was carried into captivity by the Indians in 1704. Coming next are the plates of _Francis Page_, 1703, and _William Penn_, 1703, but they are both of English make. The plate of _Thomas_ [Illustration: Isaiah Thomas] _Prince_, who was for forty years the pastor of the Old South Society in Boston, is a simple label dated 1704. The plate of _Thomas Dering_, signed by Hurd, and dated 1749, is the first American plate by an American engraver that is both signed and dated. The _John Burnet_, by Dawkins, dated 1754, is next in order; then comes the _Greene_ plate, by Hurd, 1757, the _Albany Society Library_, 1759, concerning which very little is known, and every few years an example until we come to the opening of the century. [Illustration: Albany Society Library]