During the last twenty years a great improvement has taken place in the style of boxes and labels in which the pens are packed. Formerly (with the exception of the goods issued by Gillott and Sommerville) most of the pens were sold in boxes of the plainest description; now the covers or labels are printed in a number of colors from elaborate designs, by first-class artists, and in some cases the boxes are ornamented with well-executed portraits of royal, political, literary, or artistic celebrities. There are many peculiarities connected with the public taste as manifested in the demand for pens. The Germans use a greater variety of patterns than any other nation. The English taste is more restricted, and is generally confined to articles of the plainer shapes. Autocratic Russia and democratic America make use of the fewest patterns. By a regulation of the Imperial Government, pens in boxes, bearing portraits of the Russian royal family are prevented from entering the country, and in America public taste does not favor a demand for portrait boxes. By a law which came into operation the 1st of January, 1886, no pens can be imported into Russia bearing the name of a Russian firm. The probable purpose of this law was to encourage the establishment of a Russian manufactory. At present there are no pen works in Russia. An attempt was made in Moscow, in 1876-8, to manufacture steel pens, but the experiment proved a failure. The Germans and French are the largest buyers of first-class pens, but the Italians are content with articles of the commonest character. The chief demand for three-pointed pens comes from Spain. At present the demand for steel pens is chiefly confined to European nations and their descendants. The great Asiatic nations still write with pens made from reeds, or camel-hair pencils. A few of the natives of India and Japan, and some of the subjects of the Sultan and Khe'dive are beginning to make use of steel pens adapted to the peculiarities of their writing. From this it would appear that the possibilities of the progress of the trade in the future are very favorable; but in the meantime its productions are scattered over the globe, and even in some of the darkest corners of the earth pioneers of civilization are to be found transcribing the results of their experience with the aid of that great factor of nineteenth-century progress--an English Steel Pen. THE MANUFACTURING PROCESSES OF STEEL PENS. The steel from which the greater part of the metallic pens are manufactured comes from Sheffield. Notwithstanding the many names given by the venders of steel pens to the material from which they are manufactured there are but two sorts--good and bad--and therefore Peruvian, Damascus, Amalgam, and Silver Steel are but fancy names. As a matter of fact, where a number of prefixes are used to describe the quality of an article it is generally found to have no claim to any of them.