1818.] Analyses of Books. 301 



America in the very short period of' three minutes! This is effected 

 chiefly by the employment of cylinders covered with stereotyped 

 plates, a contrivance which I invented, and endeavoured to get 

 carried into effect in this country upwards of eight years since, 

 and which at length is now, I believe, introducing here by 

 degrees. 



Mr. Donkin has much improved the machine for printing by 

 means of types fixed upon the flat sides of revolving polygons, 

 originally invented by Mr. Wm. Smith, the geologist, and Mr. 

 Bacon, of Norwich ; and particularly by the introduction of a 

 permanently elastic inking roller, the composition of which is 

 also substituted in other printing houses in the forms of balls and 

 rollers, with very considerable advantages over the usual balls, 

 \\ hich, as is well known, are covered with sheep's skin, prepared, 

 and kept in a state of use by a peculiarly offensive process. 



I am happy in being enabled to add, that the health and com- 

 fort of persons employed in the very laborious business of 

 copper-plate printing may now be very much promoted by the 

 adoption of an improvement recently made by Mr. Ramshaw, of 

 Fetter-lane, and for which he has been very deservedly honoured 

 with the gold Isis medal of the Society of Arts, namely, in heat- 

 ing the copper-plates by means of steam, supplied by one boiler 

 only to many cast iron receptacles with flat tops, on which the 

 plates are laid, and heated with great convenience' and uniformity 

 to receive the ink, instead of employing as many open vessels 

 with charcoal constantly burning in them, which, besides 

 destroying the oxygen of the atmospheric air, produced much 

 carbonic acid gas, and consequently very much injured the health 

 of the pressmen, enfeebled them, and rendered them much more 

 liable to ruptures from the violent exertions they are obliged to 

 aiake in that laborious employment. I am, Gentlemen, 



Your most obedient servant, 



Thomas Gill 



Article IX. 

 Analyses of Books. 



Journal of a Residence in the Island of Iceland during the Years 

 lb 14, 1815, &;c. By Ebenezer Henderson. 



The main object of Dr. Henderson's visit to Iceland was to 

 superintend the distribution of a number of copies of the Scrip- 

 tures, provided for the use of the inhabitants by the British and 

 Foreign Bible Society. For this purpose he made the tour nearly 

 of the whole coast, and crossed two or three times the dreary 

 uninhabitable wastes that occupy the interior of the country. 

 He thus had an opportunity of examining a much larger portion 

 of the island than has fallen under the notice of any modem 



