A useful question has been asked, and to some extent discussed, whether several of the above-cited misprints of single letters, or others similar to them, may not be due to the arrangement of the compositor’s working apparatus? Mr Keightley suggested, a few years ago, that possibly some of the varied readings of passages in Shakspeare might be due to the compositor dipping his fingers into the wrong cell, and others to the fact that wrong types have got into the right cell. Most persons who have visited any of the printing establishments are aware that the compositor’s types are placed in flat cases provided with a number of small cells or receptacles, each for one particular letter of one particular class of type. There are two cases, one called the _upper_ and the other the _lower_; the former being for the capitals, the latter for the small letters. Both cases are placed before the compositor, inclining upwards from front to back, the upper more inclined than the lower. The cells are not ranged in regular alphabetical order, but in such manner that those containing the letters most wanted shall be grouped together near the compositor’s hand, leaving such letters as _j_, _k_, _q_, _x_, _z_, &c. to occupy cells near the margin of the case. May not some types fall out of an overfilled cell into the one just below it; or may not the filling of a pair of cases with new type be so carelessly managed that a few fall over into the wrong cells; or may the compositor, in distributing the type after printing, now and then drop a type into a wrong cell? A practical printer will answer such a question in the affirmative. The letters _b_ and _l_, for instance, being in contiguous cells, one may fall or slip down into the cell belonging to the other, which might be the cause of ‘bring him to _book_’ being changed into ‘bring him to _look_.’ The old form of type for the double letter _st_ is believed to have led to many misprints—such as nostrils being expressed _stostrils_, in a Bible printed in the early part of the present century. Whether the types were arranged in the cases a hundred or two hundred years ago in the same order and manner as at present, might be worth a little investigation—in so far as any change of arrangement may have rendered either more or less frequent such misprints as would arise from the falling over of some of the types into wrong cells. There are now something like a hundred and fifty cells in a pair of cases for ordinary book and newspaper printing; even if there were the same number in former times, it does not necessarily follow that the arrangement of the rank and file would be the same.