The first three catalogues represent three distinct independent aspects of the collecting of the time. Booty, of Brighton, coming of an artistic stock, an artist himself, discusses in his preface the "great variety in execution, colour, and engraving of the design," the "tasteful arrangement," the whole of a collection, in Mr. Booty's view, arranged with the embellishments suggested by the artist, forming "a handsome appendage to the drawing-room table." Mr. Mount Brown's catalogue was more practical, if less imaginative in view. Dr. Gray brought the profundity of his scientific training into his classification of stamps in his "Hand Catalogue." So far as we know, he worked within the precincts of the British Museum, where he resided, and had little association, if any, with the rectory reunions. Mr. Overy Taylor (another of the early and able writers on philately and the editor of the later editions of "Gray") tells us that the venerable scientist regarded stamps as "the visible signs of the complete realisation of a system of communication which in his early maturity was scarcely more than a generous dream, and by treating them as such in the preface to his catalogue he at once lifted them above the level of mere meaningless curiosities." The same writer points out that Dr. Gray, "bringing to the task the habits and predilections acquired in the classification of zoological specimens, attached no importance to colour; to him the design was everything; and whether printed in black on coloured paper or in coloured ink on white was to him of very little importance. The intricacies of design he described with the utmost minuteness, and some of the terms he introduced into his description have been generally adopted." The early continental catalogues showed a similar diversity of treatment of the subject. The first lists of M. François George Oscar Berger-Levrault (1861) were mere twelve-page indices to the stamps known to the compiler, and were printed by autographic lithography at Strasbourg. The first edition of the catalogue of Alfred Potiquet was the first regularly published guide for the amateur. Its first edition, the rarest of the items in the collections of the philatelic bibliophiles, was dated from Paris, 1862, but was actually issued at the end of 1861. The author, who was an employé of the French Ministry, essayed to present his catalogue in a geographical classification, but abandoned it in favour of the alphabetical arrangement as "le plus commode." His descriptions, though in many cases now known to be inaccurate, were for the most part very minute, and he notes variations in shade, the method of production (_lithographiés_, _gravés en taille-douce_, _typographie_), and, more remarkable still, he states when the specimens are perforated (_piqués_).