=Bookbinding= is treated by Cyril Davenport, who sketches the history of his subject from the earliest times when protective covers were used over the smaller Assyrian tablets of about the 8th century B. C., through the days of Latin diptychs (the earliest prototypes of the modern book) to the time of rolls of papyrus, vellum or paper. The device of folding vellum into pages was first used about the 5th century of the Christian era, and the sewing of these signatures by fastening the threads around a strip of leather or vellum at right angles to the line of backs was the next stage in the development of the modern book. Then it was found that the bands needed protection and so strips of leather were fastened down the backs, and in order to prevent the tendency of the vellum leaves to curl, strong wooden boards were put on each side and the leather back was drawn over the boards far enough to make a hinge, thus giving us the half-bound books of the middle ages. The next steps were to cover not only the back but also the sides of the book with leather and then to decorate the leather. The art of gold tooling spread quickly, and heraldic designs were used for ornamentation from the days of Edward VI. The deterioration of the quality of modern book paper and badly prepared leathers have been serious drawbacks to good bookbinding, but there has been a revival of interest in the art for its own sake during recent years. The introduction of stamped cloth binding about 1822 developed into the case binding of today, for which elaborate machinery has been perfected. =Book-plates= are thought of by many librarians as being unworthy of their serious attention, but a mere glance at the article by Egerton Castle should convince the uninitiated as to the value of at least a rudimentary knowledge of the subject. Mr. Castle’s study of “English book-plates” appeared twenty years ago, but his interest in ex-libris has apparently not flagged despite the demands of novel writing on his time, which is a tribute to the fascinations of these little marks of ownership. Among the illustrations are reproduced the earliest known movable book-plate, one belonging to the monastery of Buxheim, dating from about 1480, and the oldest English plate, that of Sir Nicholas Bacon, 1574. Good examples are given of armorial plates of various periods, of the Jacobean, the Chippendale or rococo, and the pictorial where, as in the Bewick plate, the motif is a bit of landscape or, as in the plate by E. D. French, a library interior.