THE discovery of the art of printing is only one 

 of the score of important things whose discovery 

 must be credited to the inhabitants of the Flow- 

 ery Kingdom. Judged by the standard of time alone, 

 these Orientals have the advantage of Western nations 

 by at least a thousand years, and for even a longer 

 period for aught we know to the contrary. And yet, 

 curiously enough, the Chinese language, in which the 

 printed words are formed by symbols instead of letters, 

 is probably less adapted to the use of movable types for 

 printing than almost any other. 



In point of fact it is not quite certain that the Celes- 

 tials were familiar with the use of movable types, but 

 there is no doubt that for many centuries before the 

 discovery of printing in the West, it was customary in 

 China to take impressions on paper from engraved 

 surfaces. Certain books were engraved on slabs of 

 wood and these slabs displayed in front of the uni- 

 versities for the benefit of the students. The students 

 either took the impressions of these slabs themselves, 

 or had them taken for them, thus collecting pages of an 

 actually printed book. Several paper prints made 

 in this manner in the middle of the third century are 

 said to be still in existence. 



