THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 23 
certain branches of research, had cautiously to grope its way well 
nigh in the gloom and seclusion of necromancy ; but in the nine- 
teenth century scientific societies, patent offices, public companies 
and the ubiquitous journalist, instantaneously photograph the daily 
work of the world, and its workers in every branch of science, art 
and industry. 
On the Haarlem side of the question no books of Dutch print- 
ing, bearing name and date, between 1450 and 1460, can be 
produced. Some of the Dutch towns have preserved books printed 
at their presses in 1472-74; but the oldest dated book printed at 
Haarlem, is said to be one printed by John Andrea in 1483. There 
are books and fragments of printed books, said to be of earlier 
production than these, and which are pointed to in proof that 
Haarlem is the true birth place of printing ; but, like some of the 
early productions of the Mainz press, they bear no name, place, nor 
date. 
Numerous narratives of events, and statements of a minor 
kind, were collected by Meerman, and have been quoted by later 
writers in aid of the claim of Coster. Among these is the 
genealogy of the Costers, in the Town Hall at Haarlem ; a history 
of printing, said to have been written by Van Zorn and lost in the 
Haarlem siege ; and a statement from an Italian who had lived some 
years in Holland, that Gutenberg stole the art from Coster. But 
the most explicit and circumstantial claim for Coster and Haarlem 
was made in a work called, after the ancient name of Holland, 
Batavia, which was written by the Dutch savant Young, or Junius, 
as he was named, after the Latinizing fashion of the times. The 
Batavia was a posthumous work, published in 1538, thirteen years 
after the death of Junius and one hundred and thirty years after 
the production at Mainz of the psalter of 1457. ‘The notable part 
of the statement by Junius is: That one hundred and twenty-five 
years before he wrote, Coster printed on paper for his grand- 
children some letters cut from the bark of a beech tree; that, con- 
templating greater things, with his son-in-law’s aid, he made an ink 
more glutinous than common ink, and printed with it the Speculum 
nostrae Salvationts. He then changed his types of wood fcr leaden 
types, and these were afterwards changed for types of tin ; and, his 
business prospering, John, one of his servants—supposed to be Fust 
