This seems to be the place to speak of a very puzzling pair of engravings, which certainly appear to have been used as book-plates, dated in 1630. They represent the armorial bearings of Sir Edward Dering. One of these book-plates which I take to be the earlier, shows a less number of quarterings, and contains no indication of a really systematic expression of the metals and tinctures in the arms; but the other and later example does. The same date appears upon each. The second of the two plates occurs bound up in a volume of the Harleian Collection of MSS.; and 'Mr. Humphrey Wanly, library-keeper to Robert and Edward, Earls of Oxford,' in his description of the specimen in the Harleian Collection, calls it 'A printed cut of the Arms or Atchievement of Sir Edward Dering, Baronet, dated A.D. 1630, with a fanciful motto in misshapen Saxon characters; but by the hatching of the arms in order to show the colours, according to the way found out by Sir Edward Bysshe, I guess that it is not so old.' Now, the Harleian volume, in which this engraving occurs, is a copy, written in 1645-46, of the Heralds' Visitation of Kent in 1619; and in a later, but certainly seventeenth century, handwriting, is a description of the numerous quarterings as they appear on the engraving; so that, whilst rejecting the claim of this variety of the plate to be an engraving of 1630, we may, I think, accept it as at least an early example of the indication of the colours and tinctures by lines and dots. As for the first of the two varieties, I do not see why it should not be as early as the date upon it; there was no particular reason in selecting that date; for I do not find that it refers to any special event in Sir Edward's life. A writer to _Notes and Queries_, in 1851, states that there were several 'loose copies' of the plate--which variety, he does not say--in the Surrenden Collection, and Dr. Howard saw it 'inserted' in several folio volumes of that collection, when it was disposed of by Messrs. Puttick and Simpson. Very good facsimiles of these book-plates have been given by Dr. Howard in his _Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica_. Another early instance of the expression of the metals and tinctures occurs in the book-plate of Lord-Keeper Lyttelton, a plate which derives additional interest from the fact of its being the work of William Marshall, the famous frontispiece engraver. Sir Edward Lyttelton, the owner of the book-plate, was made Lord-Keeper in 1641, under the title of Baron Lyttelton of Mounslow. This book-plate, which shows us the arms of Lyttelton of Frankley, was evidently engraved before Sir Edward's elevation to the peerage. The book-plate, which is the earliest English example bearing an engraver's signature, may be dated about 1640.