Very dainty is the Christmas number of the Stationer, Printer, and Fancy Trades Register, in its cover of bronze and blue, and with its text and cuts in a pleasant shade of blue-black. With so many exchanges, it seems an extravagance of time to spend nearly an hour with a single number, yet that is what we have been tempted into doing. There are nearly a hundred pages, the articles are well written and well chosen, the engravings choice, and the advertisements—well, they are genuine, too, and are interesting in their own way. This excellent paper, we see, is in its thirty-fourth year of publication.

Mr Morriss's Stationery and Bookselling last month told its readers to be on the watch for the Christmas number. It is now to hand, and is an extraordinary issue, from the handsome chromo wrapper to the end. Full quarto size, with red ruled borders, superbly printed, and embellished with the best engravings from the best Christmas books, it is in all respects a grand success.

From the curiosities of advertising at the Chicago exhibition, the Journal für Buch-druckerkunst has quoted two. One is that of a firm of pianoforte makers bearing the curiously similar names of Starck & Strack. On their placards the firm name is thus set out:

With similar typographical economy does a manufacturer in another branch set forth both his name and his wares:

The Journal is one of the finest Craft papers in the world. Nothing of importance escapes the editor; no opinions are passed off at second hand, but every subject is dealt with in a thoughtful and thoroughly practical manner.

The most interesting feature of the British Printer for September-October is the specimen of a picture in Husnik & Häusler's new photochromotype process, in three workings. It is a still-life subject—fruit in a scarlet vase, and a brilliantly-colored parrot. It is in all respects equal to ordinary work in from ten to fifteen printings, and is, we feel sure, the color process of the future. Professor Husnik, by means of a complementary light-filter, secures three negatives of the color-subject, each including the whole of one of the three primaries, whether singly or in combination—thus the negative answering to blue represents all the shades of blue, purple, gray and green in the original. No artificial arrangement approaches the accuracy of selection thus secured. The subjects are etched in relief by what is known as the single-line process, the lines for each color lying at a different angle. When worked in register, in the pigments most nearly resembling the prismatic primaries, the effect is wonderfully pure.

We are pleased to note the improvement in all respects which the Revue des Arts Graphiques exhibits on its predecessor, the Gutenberg-Journal. The issues for November and December are finely printed, and are embellished with a number of exquisite engravings from the Christmas and New Year publications of the leading French houses.

The Newspaper Man (Palmer & Rey, San Francisco), keeps up its crusade against the custom of the daily press of publishing realistic details of murders and other crimes of violence. It maintains that decency is continually outraged, and the minds of the young corrupted thereby. This is true enough; but so long as that kind of thing pays, the practice will continue. In New Zealand this evil is not so prevalent; but one equally great—the publication of the foul effusions of advertising quacks—is on the increase. Of the vampires that prey on society, these men are the worst; yet we are sorry to say that they find ready access to nearly every newspaper in New Zealand.

The Printing World for October contains a long illustrated article describing the great engraving establishment of Messrs John Swain & Son. The frontispiece, from a wash drawing, is a beautiful piece of process-work; and « Off the Isle of Man » is a charming example of chromotype. We find an interesting obituary notice of Mr John Bishop, who volunteered as missionary printer at Creek Town, Old Calabar, for the United Presbyterian Church, and who, after doing good work, fell a victim to the deadly climate. Some attractive novelties are shown in the advertising pages.

Paper and Press for November contains a splendid half-tone etching — a portrait of William Cullen Bryant. Other excellent half-tone specimens appear in the same number, which is as usual full of practical technical information.

In its new form, the Printing Times and Lithographer takes a high place among its trade contemporaries, and as regards the practical value of its technical articles it is not excelled by any. We hope that Mr J. W. Harland's treatise on the Theory and Practice of Line, now appearing serially in its pages, will, on its completion, be published in separate form—it would take its place as a standard text-book. In the neatness of its pages and beauty of its presswork, the Printing Times is a model.