THE SECRETAS PRECEDE ALCHEMY AND CHEMISTRY--EFFORT TO IMPROVE GALL INKS--VARIATIONS IN INK COLORS--THE USE OF RED INK IN THE NINTH AND TENTH CENTURIES--COLOR COMPARISONS BETWEEN INK WRITINGS OF ITALY, GERMANY, FRANCE, ENGLAND AND SPAIN--HOW TO DETERMINE THE ANTIQUITY OF MSS.--PRACTICES WHICH OBTAINED IN MONASTIC LIBRARIES OF VARIOUS COUNTRIES---KINDS OF INK EMPLOYED IN LITURGICAL WRITINGS--THE PUBLIC SCRIBES AND THEIR EMPLOYMENTS--EFFORTS TO COUNTERFEIT OLD SCRIPT IN EARLY PRINTED BOOKS--WHEN THEY WERE ABANDONED. IT is well known that alchemy preceded chemistry and hence the Secreta came first. When the formula for making a real "gall" ink had ceased to be a secret, chemistry was then but little understood. It is not a matter for wonder, therefore, to learn that "gall" ink of the first half of the twelfth century was low in grade and poor in quality. It was a muddy fluid easily precipitated and it deteriorated quickly. A century or more of experimenting was needed to modify or overcome defects, as well as to gain information about the chemical value of the different tannins, the relative proportions of each constituent and the correct methods in its admixture. There is no written account of this ink being manufactured as an industry until over three hundred years later. Hence, as it appears so frequently of varying degrees of color on documents of the intervening centuries, we are compelled to assume that it was compounded by individuals who had neither chemical knowledge, nor who had made a study or a business of ink-making. Notwithstanding which, its progress seems to have been comparatively rapid and like the same ink of the present day was to be obtained of any quality or kind, whether unadulterated or containing some added color. Intense black or a black tinged with red-brown characterizes the color of the inks found on the very earliest MSS. Their lasting color phenomena, due to the employment of lampblack and kindred substances even after a lapse of so many ages, is at this late day of no particular moment as they but prove the virtues of the different types of "Indian" inks.