Chancellor Christie tells us in his exhaustive monograph, adopted a Mark and motto which are to be found in all or nearly all the productions of his press. The Mark and the motto are equally allusive: the former is an axe of the kind known as _doloire_, held in a hand which is issuing out of a cloud. Below is a portion of a trunk of a tree; it is usually surrounded by the motto, “Scabra et impolita ad amussim dolo atque perfolia”; it is often also surrounded by an ornamental woodcut border, as in the accompanying illustration; and in some cases the words “scabra dolo” are printed on the axe. [Illustration: MERLIN, DESBOYS AND NIVELLE. HOMO NASCITVR AD LABOREM VADE PIGER AD FORMICAM PROVENIET TEMPVS MESSIONIS NON ODERIS LABORIOSA OPERA] [Illustration: M. TOPIE.] [Illustration: J. TRESCHEL. I T] [Illustration: E. DOLET.] Two contemporary Lyonese firms of printers, the De Tournes and De la Portes, appear to have rivalled one another in the number of their Marks. Jean De Tournes, 1542-50, himself had no less than eleven Marks, several of which are exceedingly graceful, one of the largest and best of which represents a sower, and serves as an excellent pendant to the reaper of Jacques Roffet, both of which appear in our first chapter. The seven or eight members of the De la Porte family used at least half a score Marks between them. The family, beginning with Aymé De la Porte in the last decade of the fifteenth century, and ending with Sibylle De la Porte, were in business first as printers, then as booksellers, for just a century; and the punning device apparently originated, not with the first member of the family, but with Jehan, who started a business in Paris about 1508, and in his Mark the shield bears a castellated doorway; the picture of the biblical Samson carrying off the gates was apparently first used by Hugues De la Porte, who was a bookseller at Lyons from 1530; this was superseded for the more pictorial and considerably smaller example, here given, when he entered into partnership with Antoine Vincent about 1559. Although the Du Prés were Parisian printers, Jehan of that family issued several books at Lyons during the last few years of the fifteenth century, and one of his three Marks is given on p. 108. Sébastien Gryphe, or Gryphius, who printed and published a large number of works during the second quarter of the sixteenth century, was also extravagant in the way of Marks, of which there are at least eight, all, however, of one common type--the Griffin, sometimes quite without any sort of decorative attributes or motto, and sometimes as in the example here given. [Illustration: HUGUES DE LA PORTE AND A. VINCENT. LIBERTATEM MEAM MECVM PORTO VINCENTI] [Illustration: SÉBASTIEN GRYPHE.] [Illustration: JACQUES COLOMIES. I C IACQVES COLOMIES]