Concerning Zinc.

Zinc rule is denounced in Caslon's Circular. « Zinc, » says our contemporary, « will not stand atmospheric influences—the face will oxidize, and crumble away in time. The mixture of zinc, also, either with stereo plates or types, is a fatal error. » To show that this caution is well-founded, we will give our own experience of zinc in juxtaposition with type. More than twenty years ago, when Typo was a P.D. in his present office—when methods were primitive, founts meagre, and supplies difficult to obtain—a catalogue job came in, in leaded nonpareil; there were no leads to the measure, and lengths had run out. The foreman was a man of resource—he cut the zinc lining of a packing-case into strips, and the lead-cutter did the rest. Didn't they spring! The pages used to shrink an inch in the locking up, and the centres arched up and rose, as the quoins were driven home, like the back of an angry cat! But the first sheet was worked; the form washed and distributed, and the second sheet taken in hand. Our « zincs » by this time were pretty flat; they did not yield more than a quarter of an inch in the lock-up, but we noticed a grayish look both on the zinc and the type. Sheet No. 2 completed the job, and the form was set aside for a few days, and got perfectly dry. Then we unlocked it. We found it was a veritable stereotype! Galvanic action, assisted by the penetration of the lye, had oxidized the zinc and united it to the type-metal. We could have thrown the pages across the office without pieing them. But we boys had to dis. that nonpareil. We knocked the lines apart with the mallet. We cut away the zinc with knives—and then, with bleeding fingers, we separated the letters. The zinc strips that we took out were not half their original thickness; they were ragged at the edges, and were pierced with holes. The remainder of the zinc was encrusted on the type, as rough as sandpaper, and as hard. We had to scrape every letter; for our nonpareil had turned into an irregular kind of minion. There was a salt-water pond hard-by, where we used to fish for eels when the day's work was done. We collected our « zincs, » and pitched them into it—all except a few which had got mixed with the leads, and remained to afflict us. Since then, we have had zinc in our stereo-metal, and lost a week's work over a hot fire in midsummer, besides two hundredweight of good metal, and we don't know how to get the zinc out. [Can any one tell us?] Some zinc-bottomed galleys came into our possession once, and anything more destructive to type (except a comp. of the blacksmith stamp) we never came across. So we do not look kindly on zinc. In noticing specimens of zinc rule, we have no objection to eulogize its admirable cut, or even to note that its price is low. But we cannot describe it as « cheap. » We are afraid it might turn out to be dear at any price.