It should be noted that the forms of letters have always been much influenced by the manner in which they could be most easily made. It is easier to cut a square form of letter on stone than a cursive form, so we find that the majority of rock or stone inscriptions favour the square form rather than the rounded form of letter. We derive our angular forms of letters from the distant past, but the rounded forms are adapted from the later times of papyrus or vellum, when reed or pen writing was understood. Writings on metal have been made from time to time, but never very largely. In India inscribed plaques of bronze, kept together by metal rings, have been often used. Tablets of lead are recorded as having been used by ancient peoples, and Oriental as well as European talismanic formulæ have been engraved on small plates of silver, bronze, brass or lead, the letters being now and then damascened with gold and silver. In ancient Rome name-brands were cut in bronze, and impressions could have been printed from them. They were beautifully cut. The Nicene creed was cut in silver by order of Pope Leo III., and in the East strips of metal have constantly been substituted for the long thin pieces of palm leaf which formed the normal books. The metal leaves are found of gold, silver, or gilded copper particularly. The plates are quite thin, and the characters upon them are generally engraved, but sometimes they are chased with tracer and hammer. Such records are not only very permanent but they are also very decorative. The modern engraving of inscriptions on metal has mainly found refuge in monumental brasses, and in this case the letterings are usually run in with some pigment. [Illustration: FIG. 3.--Runic calendar on bone.] Another primitive form of record is found in the case of notches cut in wood. A savage warrior of a literary turn of mind would naturally wish to keep some record of the number of his enemies that he had killed and perhaps eaten, and an obvious way of doing this would be to cut or scratch marks on his war club. Such records would, no doubt, become customary among war-like tribes. The handles of war axes or spears would offer excellent ground for such marks, and presently, especially in peace times, similar marks may well have kept tallies of the numbers of game killed. From such personal notes the transition to others of wider interest is not difficult, and so we find the notches used, on bits of wood or sticks, for almanacks and calendars. Ogham and Runic inscriptions follow the ancient idea of notches cut along an angular edge, and these notches and rods are the very distant ancestors of our modern types of metal; the German word “Buchstab,” meaning type, is etymologically “a wooden rod.”