Our Exchanges.

With the December number the Printing Times completes its nineteenth annual volume. In future, it is to be published at fourpence, instead of sixpence as at present. It is one of the most valuable and best-edited of our large list of technical exchanges. The admirable series of « Round-about Papers » is completed in the present number, and is to be revised and published in book-form at an early date. The concluding chapter, in which some important suggestions are made as to improvements in printing machinery, is well worthy of study. One of these suggestions, relating to a pressure-guage, we quote elsewhere.

For almost perfect harmony as well as simplicity of display, we have rarely seen anything to surpass a half-page advertisement illustrating some of James Conner's Sons' new styles, in the November issue of the National Publisher and Printer. The relative importance of the lines is admirably brought out by the selection of type; and there is not a curved line or waved rule even to break the simple directness of the work. It might well serve as a model to those who think that beauty of display lies in abundance of ornament, or laborious twisting of type-lines and rules. We can see but one minor point in which we could suggest any improvement. In the last line, the end-ornaments are too long and too prominent for the size of the letter. They had better have been omitted, and the line set in a more expanded style. The compositor who set the advertisement is an artist in display.

The Inland Printer for December contains portraits, with very interesting biographical sketches, of Mr H. 0. Shepard, the printer, and Mr A. C. Cameron, the editor of that admirable trade organ,

The American Lithographer and Printer is publishing a series of articles on heraldry. Some knowledge of this science is indispensable to all designers, and ignorance of its rules produces absurd mistakes. Nothing, for example, is commoner than the ill-omened « bar sinister » on fancy shields and advertising trade-marks. The Christmas number contains an art supplement, which is quite a gem of steel engraving, machine ruling, and lithographic printing.

Typographische Neuigkeiten is always interesting. Unlike many of the typefounders' circulars, it devotes much attention to the literary and practical portion of its contents. The number for September contains, in addition to specimens of novelties, a long article on lead-poisoning, by Dr. Baumuller, and three technical articles by B. Winkler, on initials and book-ornaments, and on the new borders produced by the firm. There is also a humorous column—an unusual feature in German trade papers—containing among other matters reduced copies of the clever sketches from the comic history of the invention of printing, published some months ago by Paper and Press.