for
a brief time before they were placed here. The bindings in this library
showed very little crumbling, but many covers were breaking at the
joints from the shrinking which arises from excessive dryness. In common
with many other substances, leather yields moisture to the air much more
readily than it receives it from that medium. Cloth bindings showed no
decay at all here--very little in any of the libraries, except in the
loss of color. It should be stated that the volumes which I examined at
Harvard College were generally older than those inspected in the other
libraries. There are parchment bindings in each of the libraries
hundreds of years old, apparently just as perfect in texture as when
first placed upon the shelves of the original owner. The parchment was
often worn through at the angles, but there was no breakage from
shrinking, the material having been shrunken as much as possible when
prepared from the skin. At Harvard College I examined an embossed calf
binding stretched on wooden sides which was above a hundred years old.
It was in almost perfect preservation, and not much shrunken. This
volume, being very large, was on a shelf next the ground floor--a
position which it had probably held ever since the erection of the
building.

"Professor Nichols does not mention morocco in his tables of analyses.
Indeed, morocco was so little used for bookbindings until within about
thirty years that it affords a less ample field for investigation than
any other of the leathers now in common use. My attention was therefore
directed specially to this material, of which I found some specimens
having a record of nearly fifty years. My observation was, that in all
the libraries these were less affected by decay, in proportion to their
age, than other leathers. In Harvard College Library the best Turkey
morocco, with forty years of exposure, showed no injury except from
chafing. The outer integument was often worn away, exposing the texture
of the skin, which was still of strong fibre. In the Athenaeum, on the
contrary, many of the moroccos showed the same decay as the calf,
russia and sheep. There was, however, a wide difference in the condition
of moroccos of the same age--some showing as much decay as the calf,
while others had scarcely any of the disintegration common to the older
calf bindings. The same might, indeed, be said of all leathers, those
tanned by the quick modern methods, with much more acid than is used i