“At length the following mode occurred to me of accounting satisfactorily, as I still think it does, for the dissimilarities above noticed in the type of that work. The type of the _Speculum_ was, I conceive, made by pouring melted lead, pewter, or other metal, into moulds of earth or plaster, formed, whilst the earth or plaster was in a moist state, upon letters cut by the hand in wood or metal; in the ordinary manner used, from time immemorial, in casting statues of bronze and other articles of metal, whether for use or ornament. The mould thus formed could not be of long duration like a matrix, cut or stamped in metal, since it was obviously subject to fracture; nor could it be equally true and perfect in other respects, as it was liable to warp in drying. From moulds thus constructed, but a small number of specimens of each letter could be taken, before they would require to be renewed. This it is reasonable to suppose, was effected _by forming new moulds upon the various pieces which had been cast out of the old ones_. Those characters however, before they could have been fit for use, it had been necessary to clear, by means of the graver, from certain small particles of extraneous metal left upon them by the process of casting; so that the small accidental dissimilarities in different specimens of the same letter, originally occasioned by this imperfect mode of casting them, were necessarily augmented by the after process of finishing or clearing them with a sharp instrument, (the marks of which are very clearly to be perceived in the type of the Speculum); and thus the renewed moulds, formed upon the letters thus prepared, would necessarily differ, and in some cases very materially, from the former moulds, and also (for these moulds could be multiplied at pleasure) from each other. That a book, printed with type thus manufactured, should present a never ending variety in the forms of the different specimens of the same letter, is therefore not surprising; it is rather a subject for our admiration that the dissimilarity in the characters in the work before us is not greater and more immediately apparent.” The above mode of accounting for the discrepancies in the appearances of the different specimens of the same letter, is opposed to that put forward by Koning, who takes it for granted that the types were cast by the printer of the _Speculum_ in the same way, and with the same kind of apparatus, as that now used by type-founders, only that the punches were made of hard wood, and the matrices of lead or pewter; and he accounts for certain peculiar fractures he had perceived in several instances on the top of the capital =E= as well as in a number of the capital =M= in which a part of the central upright stroke was broken in the middle, by supposing that some of the punches had been continued in use after they had received small injuries.