PRIMITIVE BOOKS 



A natural inference, based on the observation of the 

 Battak and Aztec books, would be that some one was 

 led to adopt the same plan of folding the parchment 

 scroll, which we have seen in vogue amongst these 

 nations, and that the constant wearing away of the edge 

 of such a book, with the consequent exposure of the un- 

 used surface, forced new possibilities upon the attention. 

 But it is always futile, in such a case as this, to attempt 

 to reason from effects back to causes. Things seem so 

 easy after they are done, that it is more natural to 

 accuse our predecessors of stupidity for their delay 

 rather than to give them credit for their invention. 

 And in this particular case, it seems so natural a thing 

 to use both sides of a sheet of paper in writing, that 

 one can hardly avoid wondering at the conservatism 

 of the many generations of the scribes of antiquity who 

 wasted half their writing material. 



But whatever the exact stages of transition, the folded 

 book with cut leaves, inscribed upon both surfaces, the 

 said leaves fastened together at one edge and bound into 

 a volume almost precisely like a modern book, had 

 fully established itself in popular usage by the third or 

 fourth century of our era. Since that time there have 

 been numerous minor modifications or shifts of fashion 

 in book-making, but the essential principles of the mere 

 mechanics of the art have not been modified. When, 

 in the fifteenth century, the printing-press began to 

 supersede the old-time scribe, there was no question 

 of inventing a new type of book; the whole thought of 

 the makers of printing-presses was merely how to adapt 

 their machinery to the form of book which custom had 



