With respect to the preparation of black and colored inks and also colors: Antonio Neri, an Italian author and chemist who lived in the sixteenth century, in his treatise seems not only to have laid the foundation for most of the receipts called attention to by later writers during the two hundred years which followed, but to have been the very first to specify a proper "gall" ink and its formula, as the most worthy of notice. Pietro Caneparius, a physician and writer of Venice, A. D. 1612, in his work De Atrametis, gives a more extensive view about the preparation and composition of inks and adopts all that Neri had given, though he never quotes his name, and adds--"hitherto published by no one." He does however mention many valuable particulars which were omitted by Neri. Most of his receipts are about gold, silver and nondescript inks, with directions for making a great variety for secret writing and defacing. This book revised and enlarged was republished in London, 1660. In 1653 Peter Borel, who was physician to Louis XIV, King, of France published his "Bibliotheca Chemica," which contains a large number of ink receipts, two of which may be characterized as "iron and gall" ones. They possess value on account of the relative proportions indicated between the two chemicals. The colored ones, including gold, silver and sympathetic inks are mostly repetitions of those of Neri and Caneparius. The French writers, though, speak of his researches in chemistry as "somewhat credulous." Christopher Merret, an English physician and naturalist, born A. D. 1614, translated Neri into our language in 1654, with many notes of his own about him; his observations have added nothing of value to the chemistry of inks. Johann Kunckel, a noted German chemist and writer in 1657, republished in the German language Neri's work with Merret's notes, and his own observations on both. He also inserted many other processes as the result of considerable research and seems to have been thoroughly conversant with the chemistry of inks, advocating especially the value and employment of a tanno-gallate of iron ink for record purposes. Salmon, A. D. 1665, in his Polygraphics, proceeds to give instructions relative to inks which notwithstanding their merit are confounded with so many absurdities as to lessen their value for those who were unable to separate truth from falsehood; but he nevertheless dwells on the virtues of the "gall" inks. Jacques Lemort, a Dutch chemist of some note, issued a treatise, A. D. 1669, on "Ink Formulas and Colors," seemingly selected from the books of those who had preceded him. He expresses the opinion that the "gall" inks if properly compounded would give beneficial results.