time, are our preceptors in the style and mode of affixing marks to articles of fictile manufacture. We do as they did long before the Christian era. Their official annals record, as the inventor of pottery, the Emperor Hoang-ti, to whom they assign a date of 2698 years B.C.; and they tell us that under his reign there was a superintendent of pottery named Ningfong-tsee.1 The Chinese had a priority of 1600 years over the invention of European porcelain; yet we find proofs of their trade-marks. These are of two sorts.2 One kind is composed of Chinese characters, which tell under what reign the article was made; the other by designs in color, or engraved names of men, or of establishments, indicating the author of a vase, 'the place of manufacture, or the destination of the article, as for the use of the emperor or other dignity. On a piece of pure white china of great antiquity there was found stamped a factory-mark.

§ 14. When the pioneers in the art of printing were pondering their new invention, during the transition period from block-printing with detached letters, Gutenberg, in 1436, entered into an agreement with John Riffe, Anthony Heilman, and Andrew Dreizehn, in which affair the three associates were to furnish the necessary funds, while Gutenberg was to pay them one-half of any profits, the other half being for himself. After a time the association broke up, differences arose about the liquidation, and a lawsuit was the consequence. By the records of this suit, it appears that they kept their invention a secret, and called themselves "Spiegelmachers" (makers of looking-glasses). The speculum was their protecting symbol. Aldus Manutius, the famous Venetian printer, adopted the dolphin and anchor as his mark, borrowing the idea from a silver medal of the Emperor Titus, presented to him by Cardinal Bembo. In 1503, the olive-tree was the sign of Henry

1 Marryat's Pottery and Porcelain. London, 1857.

2 Histoire et Fabrication de la Porcelaine Chinoise. Translated from the Chinese by Julien. Paris, 1856.

Estienne, a bookseller and printer, whose firm for several generations continued to be the leading publishers and printers in Paris. The booksellers generally had a wood-cut of their signs for the colophon of their books, so that their shops might become known by the inspection of the cut. For that reason, Benedict Hector, one of the early Bolognese printers, gives this advice to buyers, in his "Justinus et Florus: ""Purchaser, beware, when you wish to purchase books from my printing-office. Look at my sign, which is represented on the title-page, and you can never mistake. For some evil-disposed printers have affixed my name to their incorrect and faulty works, in order to secure a better sale for them." Jodocus Badius, of Paris, gives a similar caution: "We beg the reader to notice the sign, for there are men who have adopted the same title, and the name of Badius, and so filch our labor." In the preface to the Livy of 1518, of Aldus, before mentioned, a similar fraud is exposed: "Lastly, I must draw the attention of the student to the fact that some Florentine printers, seeing that they could not equal our diligence in correcting and printing, have resorted to their usual artifices. To Aldus' Institutiones Grammaticæ, printed in this office, they have affixed our well-known sign of the dolphin wound round the anchor. But they have so managed, that any person who is in the least acquainted with the books of our production, cannot fail to observe that this is an impudent fraud; for the head of the dolphin is turned to the left, whereas that of ours is well known to be turned to the right."

§ 15. An acquaintance with booksellers' marks or signs, as expressed in the title-pages of their books, is of some use, because many books have no other designation of origin. We find an anchor, the mark of Raphelengius, at Leyden; the same, with a dolphin twisted around it, the mark of the Manutii, at Venice and Rome; the Arion, denoting a book published by Oporinus, at Basle; the Caduceus or the Pegasus, on the publications of the Wechelénses, at Paris and Frankfort;

the cranes of Cramoisey; the compass of Plantin of Antwerp; the sphere in a balance of Janson or Blaow, at Amsterdam; the lily of the juntas at Venice, Florence, Lyons, and Rome. Many publishers also made use of monograms com.pounded of the initials or other letters of their names. These furnish a clew to the discovery of the printer, where they occur on books without the printers' names. He who desires to examine a treasure-house of lore upon this subject to assure himself how general was the adoption of proprietary marks by painters, designers, engravers, and sculptors, can consult the "Dictionnaire des Monogrammes, Marques figurées, Lettres initiales, Noms abrégés," &c., of François Brulliot, published at Munich in 1832-3-4, and to be found in the Astor Library in the city of New York, and in the Congressional Library.

§ 16. We can trace proprietary marks a long way back in the history of England. In the Archæologia for 1812, a roll of 219 swan-marks is given, together with the ordinances respecting swans in the river Witham, in Lincoln, the same belonging to various gentlemen. This paper bears the date of 1570. The marks consisted of nicks, the nicking being done by swan-herds, appointed by the king's license. A register of all the marks was kept. None but freeholders were to have marks, and those were to be perfectly distinct from those used by other gentlemen. For instance, the company of the vintners had two nicks on their bills. This mode of indicating exclusive proprietorship is still annually illustrated by the guilds of London, who are entitled to claim the cygnets found with their old birds.

§ 17. The case of Southron v. Reynolds,2 in England, in 1865, was in regard to a violation of a trade-mark used on clay pipes made at Broseley. A "broseley" is a household word with thousands who use the thing while wholly ignorant of its deriva

1 Encyclop. Britannica, vol. v. p. 30.

2 12 L. T. R. (N.s.) 75.

tion, being unaware that they perpetuate the name of a quiet little village in Shropshire, on the banks of the Severn, whose chief reputation rests upon the excellence of the quality of the tobacco-pipes there made; although, singular to state, not made of the clay there found. Of the pipes collected near. there two hundred have marks upon the spur, not two of which are alike. The manufactures at that place have been traced back to the year 1575, a time anterior to the introduction of tobacco into England, which suggests the inquiry as to what purpose said pipes could have been applied. One mark is of an open hand, with the initials S. D., probably Samuel Decon. Aubrey describes pipes made in his day by one Gauntlett, who marked the heels of them with a gauntlet, whence they were called Gauntlett pipes. It is not improbable, says the historian, that Decon might have learned the "whole art and mystery of pipe-making from Gauntlett, and then have adopted his special mark with the addition of his own initials, as a coat of arms is differenced in heraldry. About eighty years ago, the pipe-makers there began to stamp their distinctive symbols upon the stems instead of the spurs.

§ 18. As a rule, trade-marks are optional in England and France, as well as in our own country; but there are exceptions in connection with various kinds of business. In England, an act of Parliament empowered the Goldsmiths' Company to call upon the manufacturers to bring all the articles made by them to their hall, for the purpose of being assayed and stamped with the hall-mark; but various exceptions from hallstamping were sanctioned by law. In the same manner the Cutlers' Company, of Sheffield, were empowered to grant marks to persons carrying on any of the incorporated trades, with power of summary jurisdiction before two magistrates, to enforce such regulation. We perceive that extraordinary means have been required at all times to guard against the fraudulent use of marks of manufacture. The protection of innocent purchasers was the motive of legislation. Rogues dealt in the precious and useful wares then as now.

§ 19. The first instance on record of an attempt to reduce goldsmiths' work to a certain standard was in the reign of Henry III., A.D. 1238, when, in consequence of the frauds which had been practised by the gold and silver smiths, it became necessary to prescribe some regulation for their trade, because the mixing of too much alloy in the composition of their wares tended to encourage the melting down of the coin of the realm. A.D. 1300 (28 Edward I. c. 20), it was ordained that the precious metals be assayed; and further, that the articles be marked with the "leopard's head." By the goldsmiths' ordinance of the year 1336, three distinct marks are mentioned: 1. The goldsmith's mark, to wit, his initials; 2. The assay mark, probably a letter of the alphabet; and 3. The mark of the Goldsmiths' Hall, a leopard's head, crowned. A.D. 1379 (2 Richard II.), it was enacted by Parliament that every goldsmith should have his own proper mark upon his work, and the mark of the city or borough where it was assayed; and that, after the assay, the work should be stamped with another mark, to be appointed by the king. There were many subsequent statutes and ordinances upon the same subject, penal in their nature. Marks were obligatory as checks. upon fraud. In 1739 (12 George II.) it was ordained that the manufacturers were to destroy their existing marks, which were the first two letters of their surnames, and to substitute the initials of their Christian names and surnames. The curious can find tables of all the marks recorded in Goldsmiths' Hall from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries; and also all the standard and assay stamps required by the French law of April 7th, 1838.1

1 See William Chaffer's book (London, 1872), entitled, "Hall-marks on Gold and Silver Plate," &c.