carefully through the book, seeing that the catchwords, if there are any, answer to the head lines; and if there are "signatures," that is, if the foot of the leaves of a sheet of parchment has any mark for enabling the binder to "gather" them correctly, going through them, and seeing that each signed leaf has its corresponding "blank."
1. To collate a Bible, it will be necessary first to go through the catch-words, if any, and signatures, as above; then to notice the contents. The first page should contain the Epistle of St. Jerome to the reader. It will be observed that there is nothing of the nature of a title-page, but I have often seen title-pages supplied by some ignorant imitator in the last century, with the idea that the book was imperfect without one. The books of the Bible follow in order but the order not only differs from ours, but differs in different copies. The Apocryphal books are always included. The New Testament usually follows on the Old without any break; and the book concludes with an index of the Hebrew names and their signification in Latin, intended to help preachers to the figurative meaning of the biblical types and parables. The last line of the Bible itself usually contains a colophon, in which sometimes the name of the writer is given, sometimes the length of time it has taken him to write, and
