These are the chief _desiderata_ for the general collector. They read rather portentously; but the cult of condition comes by practice to all who have the true love of stamps, for if stamps are worth collecting at all they are worthy of our best endeavours to keep them in the pink of condition. "It is part of the decency of scholars," says Richard de Bury, "that whenever they return from meals to their study, washing should invariably precede reading, and that no grease-stained finger should unfasten the clasps or turn the leaves of a book"; it should be no less a part of the decency of the philatelist, and in the case of his treasures the true lover of stamps will not neglect the merest trifles which will perpetuate the perfect preservation of his specimens. The use of the stamp-hinge or mount is simple, and, with proper care, perfectly effective. It is a small strip of paper gummed on the one side for folding in the form of a hinge, the gummed surface being on the outside of the hinge when folded. One arm of the hinge is lightly affixed to the top back, or right side of the back of the stamp, the other portion being fixed to the album. The slightest touch of moisture is sufficient for the purpose. The best hinges are stamped with a die out of a kind of onion-skin paper, are semi-transparent, and evenly coated on the one side with a colourless mucilage. In folding for use, the hinge should be formed of a long arm for the album--say, two-thirds of the hinge--and a short one--one-third--for the stamp. The short arm should be applied quite close to the top or side (top mounting is the more general), so that in turning up a stamp for examination there is no creasing of the upper part of the stamp. The process should be manipulated with the tweezers, so that the stamp is never fingered, and in smoothing down the page of mounted stamps a clean blotter should be used. There can be no doubt that repeatedly mounting a stamp, even if carefully done by a practised hand, has a cumulative detrimental effect on the specimens. The temptation to use the convenient digit is present on every occasion, and even the cleanest finger must make some--perhaps infinitesimal--mark on the face; multiply this by, say, seven times, and the stamp, from being "mint," becomes merely "unused," and so on until after the proverbial seventy times seven the stamp would come within the category of "soiled." So, too, with each successive remounting, unless the first mount be preserved intact (as is possible with good "peelable" mounts handled with care), through a succession of removals of the stamp there is a loss of the gum which is part of the stamp, and in the various stages this becomes a skinned, or "thinned," copy.