impossibility hitherto of imparting the requisite identical expression, notwithstanding the most careful examination and tracing, constantly adds force to an old saying among dealers that "to make a perfectly successful imitation of Stradivari he must be a Stradivari himself." In this view it is obvious that a maker having the sure consciousness of possessing the power of the master would no longer make tracings of him, but bring out his own originals. Among the scores and scores of imitators, some of them having achieved considerable renown as such, the best of them have not succeeded further than giving their own impress to their tracing of the master's work. This is quite apart from their failure to reproduce the master touch in other branches of the liutaro's art. In the composition of his purfling he had been, before the periods under consideration, somewhat unsettled, but he now seemed to have come to a conclusion that the middle or light coloured portion, should be a trifle wider than the dark or outer portion. This was also for a permanency with but little variation. The three parts are probably of the same kind of wood, with the outer portion darkened by artificial means and not wood with its natural colour, as in so many early works. But there was no change in the manner of insertion. There was the same firm, upright handling of the purfling tool, which, as in his early period, was sent along with unerring precision and cut its way through hard and soft wood cleanly and equally well. In this respect of mechanical dexterity, the great master has had few rivals; he was apparently equally at home in subduing to his requirements a log of tough, curled maple, as in gently reducing the exquisitely refined growth of pine that was to act as a soundboard in throwing out the luscious quality of tone associated with his name. It was not always so among the most eminent of Italian liutarios. Many of them have left unmistakeable evidence of impatience when trying to overcome the resistance of the tortuously grained maple in turn with the much softer and straight threaded pine. There was a peculiarity connected with the purfling that must not be overlooked, and that is, its passing through the little pegs at the upper and lower part of the instrument, and which is most carefully attended to by modern close imitators, so that people should be convinced, if possible, that their's is the real thing. Stradivari, however, may not have conceived the idea of there ever being in the future the swarms of his imitators, who, for the last century, have been but too evident in consequence of the daily increasing admiration or even reverence for his work. It is not surprising, therefore, that for some reason known only to himself, he, on rare occasions, did not run the purfling through the peg, or to be more strictly correct, the peg was inserted clear of the purfling line. That this peg peculiarity is no point of recognition may be inferred from the