Our Exchanges.

No. 1 of the new series of the Printers' Album (Shniedewend & Lee Company, Chicago), with which is now incorporated the Electrotyper, is to hand; and shows a great improvement on its predecessors. The style of composition is harmonious, and the pages have a beautifully clean appearance. The opening article by Mr Herbert L. Baker, on « Printer Incubators, » deals with an abuse which is (comparatively) as common in the Colonies as in the United States.

Our Danish contemporary, the Typografiske og lithografiske Meddelelser, contains a lively little story of the phonograph, for which in the absence of more serious matter, we may some day find a place.

There is no falling-off in the Bookmart: the numbers for May and June are as full as ever of critical and bibliographical lore. The issue for May contains a charming fragment of ten four-line stanzas, by Hartley Coleridge, hitherto unpublished, entitled « Infancy. » The modest editor, Mr Lord, is fond of disguising his name by anagrams. In the June number his signature figures as « Harold Klett » and « Roderick Thradthall. »

Mr John Southward, who has edited the Printers' Register with great ability for a good many years, severed his connexion with that paper at the end of June, having accepted the editorship of the Paper and Printing Trades Journal. In the June issue of the Register, Mr Seffern's account of the New Zealand Herald and Auckland Gazette is quoted. It concludes with the words, « The Herald had a chequered career for about ten months, when it was sold by auction. » « It is now, » adds the Register, « one of the most successful and well-conducted journals of the whole colonial press. » The Register here makes a mistake, though a quite excusable one. There is no connexion between the two Heralds. When the present one appeared, the first had been dead and forgotten for nearly a quarter of a century.

The Gutenberg Journal, of 2nd July, quoting from l'Imprimerie, states that the English founders have finally decided to adopt a common standard pica—one-sixth of an inch, and to cast all the other sizes to aliquot parts—the point being one-twelfth pica. This is precisely the reform we advocated at considerable length in our first volume. The sizes, it is said, will be named as follows: Excelsior, = 3-point; Brilliant, = 3⅓ (a misprint for 3½); Semi-brevier (why not the old name, « Gem »?),=4; Diamond,=4½; Pearl, = 5; Agate, = 5½; Nonpareil, = 6; Minion, = 7; Brevier, = 8; Bourgeois, = 9; Long Primer, = 10; Small Pica, = 11; Pica, = 12; Minion (of course two-line or double minion is intended), = 14. It will be seen that two names, « Excelsior » and « Agate, » are borrowed from the American nomenclature—the latter supplanting the old English « Ruby. » The names, however, when a point-system is introduced, will gradually die out, the numbers taking their place. What strikes us as very remarkable, if, this important item is correct, is the complete silence of our English trade exchanges on the subject.