Thus with the past winter there developed a new, still more busy life of this rare, useful man; and thus there originated the present work that I do not hesitate to declare as belonging among the most noteworthy productions of the present Leipsic Book Fair. The book is in two parts: (1) the history of the invention and of the various applications of the new art: (2) the description of the methods for writing, drawing, engraving, transferring, etching, and printing, stated with all the clearness possible, and accompanied with object-lessons in the form of wonderfully successful and instructive specimen plates. With the great candor inherent in the character of the author he tells faithfully how he came to make his first experiments, what mistakes he made, with what inner and outer difficulties he contended, how one idea led to another, what combinations he tried, what plans, successful and unsuccessful, he made, and under what unrest and embarrassments he lived for many years. The minute detail of the history and the interpolation of the personal relations of the author and his acquaintances may surprise many readers at first sight; but many of these are intimately connected with the development of stone-printing, and in the cases of others, the author did not have time to re-write what really had been written as only the first draft, because his original intention of re-writing would have prevented the appearance of the book in the present Easter Book Fair. In the history of an important invention, minuteness hardly can be called a fault. How gladly would we read all the family circumstances of Johann Gutenberg and Johann Fust, if there were such a history of the beginnings of typography as now is before us about lithography! Thus there has been fulfilled the desire that Herr Alois Senefelder tell openly and plainly how he came to discover stone-printing. Now that his testimony and claims lie open to all eyes, it is possible to compare it with the other stories that are told, and to bring the necessary accuracy into the investigation by sharply defining those things that properly may be called stone-print. It is time to urge contemporaries once more to declare anything known to them that is in contradiction of this history, so that a critical history of stone-printing may be produced, with a chronicle of what was done in the early years of the art, how and by whom, so that we may learn if several minds had the idea simultaneously, and thus to do justice to all. It is to be desired that a writer equipped for the purpose with total non-partisanship, utter truthfulness, and clearness of perception and judgment may do this not unimportant service to literature very soon! As to the text-book, forming the second part of this publication, it has been demanded even more than the history.