It is clear that the poster is one of the oldest and most obvious forms of advertisement. It is almost impossible to conceive a time in the history of man, once he had learned to express his thoughts in design or in writing, when the idea of the thing did not exist. It must have been an incident of the most crude and ancient of civilizations; even the cave-dweller in the dim and distant past must surely have possessed the essential idea of it. From the cave-dweller to the comparatively complex civilization of the ancient and greater Egypt is a far cry. That the mural inscription, which is obviously the germ of the poster, flourished exceedingly in the Land of the Pharaohs is matter of history. A papyrus is comprised in the collections of the Louvre, which may fairly be described as a poster. It is dated so early as 146 b.c., and deals at length with the escape of two slaves from the city of Alexandria, offering a reward to anybody who should discover their place of retreat. Still more interesting, though less ancient, is an inscription in Greek, discovered in the Temple at Jerusalem, in 1872, by M. Clermont-Gannerau. It was issued during the reign of Herod the Great, and forbids the entry, by foreigners, to certain parts of the Temple on pain of death. Of the poster in Greece we know very little. Legal inscriptions were undoubtedly written on whitened walls, or on axones, the latter being wooden tablets painted white, and made to revolve slowly on an upright axis. In passing from Greece to Rome, we pass from somewhat fragmentary to comparatively exact: information. The Roman notice-board was called an _album_, and it is a matter of dispute whether it was white with black letters, or of a dark colour with the text in white. Anybody who took away, destroyed, or mutilated an album was liable to an _actio albi corrupti_, and to heavy damages besides. It appears to have been invented in the first place, in order to give publicity to the annual edict of the Praetor; subsequently, however, the word album was used to signify any tablet on which a public announcement was inscribed. The ruins of Pompeii have furnished us with at least one interesting fragment of an album, on which are written notices of the most diverse kinds. Amongst them are the following: FAMILIA. GLADIATORIA VENATIO. ET. VELA. and: A. SVETTII. CERII. AEDILIS. FAMILIA. GLADIATORIA. PUGNAVIT. POMPEIS. PR. K. IVNIAS. VENATIO. ET. VELA. ERUNT. and again: DEDICATIONS THERMARUM. MUNERIS. ENAI. ALLEI. NIGIDII. MAII. VENALIO. ATHELA. SPARSIONES. VELA. ERUNT. MAIO. PRINCIPI. COLON IAE. FELICITER. As for the Roman bookseller, he was in the habit of placarding his shop with the titles of books just published, or about to be published. Take, for instance, the shop described by Martial in the lines: " Contra Caesaris est forum taberna, Scriptis postibus hinc et inde totis, Omnes ut cito perlegas poetas.