Note 144 — Early Typography. CHAPTER V.

Some of these bindings were wonderful specimens of patient labour. Wooden boards as thick as the panels of a door, studded with large brass nails with ornamented heads and massive metal corners, for sides, the backs solid with paste and glue, and the fronts fastened with heavy clasps, were by no means rare. Sometimes these covers were so made as to serve as receptacles for relics. Scaliger tells us that his grandmother had a printed Psalter, the cover of which was two inches thick, the inside forming a kind of cupboard in which was a small silver crucifix; and Mr. Hansard relates having seen an ancient book, in the cover of which was a recess for a relic—a human toe!