Cis) 
This great edifice was founded on oral tradition. Later 
on written tradition, and still later printed tradition took its 
place. When society comes to depend upon the one it in large 
part ceases to depend upon the others, and in changing its 
methods it is itself changed. Contrast, for instance, the period 
in the life of each one of us when we ceased to remember the 
affairs of daily life and gave our memory into the keeping of 
ink and paper. Although much was gained in the inevitable 
change, something was lost. Until recently there have been 
many people in this country, there are probably a few now, 
who, unable to read or write, can remember the details of 
complicated accounts in a manner astonishing and impossible 
to those who possess these accomplishments. We see that 
when society in any age has come to depend upon printing it 
will be through printing and not in other ways that it will 
contribute its chief share to the social edifice; and this is not 
a mere truism, for that age will have lost in large measure 
other powers which would have been developed in earlier 
‘times, powers which would still develop if printing did not 
exist. 
Our American friends who enter so thoroughly into the 
essentials of a subject whenever they direct their attention to 
it, have not, so far as I am aware, made any determined attack 
upon this problem. Indeed, the majority of the scientific 
works, which they so freely and generously place at the dis- 
posal of students in other lands, are printed upon material,—I 
will not call it paper,—constructed of the felted fragments of 
wood, or of a thin paper backing overlaid and loaded with 
china-clay. The latter class are abnormally heavy, the former 
abnormally light. 
This is a matter so important that it ought not to be left to 
the President of your Society to sound the warning. It is a 
matter which it would have been well if the Royal Society or 
the British Association had taken up years ago. It is not 
creditable to have left to our artist brethren a subject of such 
paramount importance to ourselves ; for to them belongs the 
honour of having made the only serious attempts to improve 
our practice and to call attention to the evil. 
To the trades concerned I would say that it is strange want 
