In large establishments, folding is done by machinery, without which it would be impossible for the enormous quantities of work to be turned out There are a great many machines in the market and it would be difficult to say which is best. Nearly all bookbinders' engineers manufacture folding machines, and some are manufactured with special features to suit certain requirements. Cundall's is a very good machine, which does its work well without any special attention, and will do two, three, or four folds. It has a nice tidy delivery, and is easily set from one size to another. Its speed is close on 1,700 per hour, so that, with

a very ordinary feeder, it will fold 1,500 sheets per hour. The Salmon machine acts much on the same principle. The name of Martini is well known in England in connection with the Martini Henry rifle but on the Continent his name is still more famous for the invention of the single and duplex folding machine; and a wonderful machine it is, folding sheets of paper by means of a series of cross metal knives, folding true to register, and delivering in a trough already knocked up. Binders in this country were slow in adopting this class of machine. With the tape machine there is always is a large number of refolds at the end of the day's work, and there is the risk of a tape breaking at an awkward moment. Both of these evils are entirely obviated by the Martini folders, for there is not an inch of moving tape used to carry the sheet from fold to fold. Two girls feed the machine; they stand each with a pile of sheets below her hand, at the ends of the machine, feeding them one by one to the points or gauges. The sheet is carried immediately to the centre of the table, first from one side, then from the other, the knife going up and down away from where the girls are standing, causing the sheet - to disappear. Such a machine can get through an enormous quantity of work.

In order the better to describe the further stages of binding, let it be supposed that the operator is dealing with one book consisting of nineteen sec­tions, each section, except the title sheet, which contains eight pages only, consisting of sixteen pages. This will give a total of 288 pages of text and eight pages of introductory matter, consisting of title page, preface, and contents. The signatures of the sheets, omitting the letter J, will run from B to T, and the title sheet will not contain a signa­ture. The sheets must be placed in their proper order, and the folded edges, which will be the heads and the backs of the sections, brought level by knocking them up on the table. The embryo book may now be placed in the press between a couple of boards, and subjected to pressure in order that the sheets may lie closely together.

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