ods are so injured as to make it unfit for more permanent binding
unless an unreasonable amount of time is spent on it. It is a great
pity that publishers do not, in the case of books expected to have a
permanent literary value, issue a certain number of copies printed on
good paper, and unbound, for the use of those who require permanent
bindings; and in such copies it would be a great help if sufficient
margin were left at the back of the plates for the binder to turn it
up to form a guard. If the plates were very numerous, guards made of
the substance of the plates themselves would make the book too thick;
but in the case of books with not more than a dozen plates, printed on
comparatively thin paper, it would be a great advantage.

Some books in which there are a large number of plates are cut into
single leaves, which are held together at the back by a coating of an
indiarubber solution. For a short time such a volume is pleasant
enough to handle, and opens freely, but before long the indiarubber
perishes, and the leaves and plates fall apart. When a book of this
kind comes to have a permanent binding, all the leaves and plates have
to be pared at the back and made up into sections with guards--a
troublesome and expensive business. The custom with binders is to
overcast the backs of the leaves in sections, and to sew through the
overcasting thread, but this, though an easy and quick process, makes
a hopelessly stiff back, and no book so treated can open freely.

REFOLDING

[Illustration: FIG. 6.--Dividers]

When the sheets of books that have to be rebound have been carelessly
folded, a certain amount of readjustment is often advisable,
especially in cases where the book has not been previously cut. The
title-page and the half-title, when found to be out of square, should
nearly always be put straight. The folding of the whole book may be
corrected by taking each pair of leaves and holding them up to the
light and adjusting the fold so that the print on one leaf comes
exactly over the print on the other, and creasing the fold to make
them stay in that position. With a pair of dividers (fig. 6) set to
the height of the shortest top margin, points the same distance above
the headline of the other leaves can be made. Then against a
carpenter's square, adjusted to the back of the fold, the head of one
pair of leaves at a time can be cut square (see fig. 7). If the book
has been p