him to give the box a throw or jerk; with his right hand at liberty, he could pull out the mould and dislodge the type in the usual manner. There are other features in Amman’s wood-cut requiring notice. Upon the lower shelf are two crucibles, which were put in use, probably, when making the alloy of type-metal. The use of the sieves is not apparent; they may have been needed to sift the sand for the sand moulds, in which bars of type-metal were made, and in which large initial types were cast. The crucibles, the furnace, the mould, the position of the type-caster, and the single types with jets attached, are enough to prove that types were cast, one by one, by the process subsequently described by Moxon. It is plain that the elementary principles of type-founding were as clearly understood in 1564 as they are at this day. The most obscure feature in this wood-cut is the matrix. The three little bits resting on the chest of drawers are too rudely cut to enable us to decide positively that they are matrices. We infer that they are from their surroundings and from the apparent necessity for such implements; but it would be more satisfactory to know, and not infer, that the early type-founders used matrices of hard metal. There are no engravings of type-founding of earlier date than this cut of Amman’s, but we have some evidences which point to a very early use of moulds of hard metal. We find in many of the books of the sixteenth and fifteenth centuries [p064] occasional allusions to type-making. Considered separately, they are of little importance; considered together, they are ample proof that types were made of fluid metal in moulds and matrices of brass, not less than one hundred years before Amman made his wood-cuts. In 1507, Ivo Wittig put up a stone to the memory of John Gutenberg, on which he had engraved that Gutenberg was the first to make printing letters _in brass_. We do not find in any record of authority that Gutenberg printed books by types cut out of brass. There are difficulties connected with the cutting and use of brass types which would make such an assertion incredible. If we accept the literal translation of the Latin epitaph, and supplement it with a little knowledge of type-founding, we shall then understand what Wittig meant—that Gutenberg, by using melted metal, made types in brass moulds. Trithemius, writing in 1514, observes that Gutenberg and Fust “discovered a method of founding the forms of all the letters, which they called matrices, from which they cast metal types.” The statement of the bishop is somewhat confused, and his specification of Fust as an inventor is, probably, incorrect, but every typographer who reads his description cannot fail to see that he has endeavored to describe the established method of making types—the method in use to this day.