PRELIMINARY NOTE. Last yoar appoared an excellent “Catalogue of tlie Books printod in Iceland from A. D. 1578 to 1880 in tho Library of the British Musoum,” compilod by the late Mr. Tho- mas W. Lidderdale and publislied by the Museum autliorities. As a slight addition to tlio titles in that catalogue I print the following list of works found in my own collection, which do not oxíst in the Library of the British Museum. I have seleeted, however, only those books which were issued before the autumn of 1814, and for these reasons : — 1. De- scriptions of tho books printed since that date, as well as most of the books themselves, may bo procurod with little difficulty; 2. My collection includes nearly every important production of the Icelandic press during the last forty years, and the list, if continued farther, would havo been too long for a single issue of these rostricted Noticos; 3. The romoval of the thon only oxisting printing-house in tho island from Vihey to the capital, wliicli was spoedily followed by increased activity, by tlie establishment of other presses, and hy marked clianges in typographical mothods, makes the date of that event a conve- niont stopping-point. Strictly, therefore, tho list is supplementary to columns 1-18 of tho British Musoum Catalogue. With vory few exceptions all books published in Iceland, down to the date indicated, wero printed in tho G-othic type or black letter, modified, by the Viðey press, into the semi-Gothic still in use in Danish printing; the Latin letter, first employed in Icelandic books issued in Copenhagen, did not become general in the island itself until about 1850. The earliest publications were without page or folio numoration, but tho signature num- bers woro often continued through all the folios of the sheet. Catchwords on each page lasted until 1818. The old-style long commas were at first the universal rule; such ab- broviated forms as ‘Z' (et) for oy, and ’ for þe, occur, thougli tho latter was perhaps moro usual in the first Icolandic books printed in Denmark, soon disappearing even thore; and a stroke abovo a letter, as in books of early date in other languages, supplied the placo of a following m or n. Tlie long a was represented sometimes by ‘aa’, but more commonly bj‘ ‘m’ (for which, in tlio Gotliic letter, an inverted w served), whicli was used as late as 1816; tlio long i or y was denoted by ‘ii’ or ‘ij’, the lattor cast as a single type; tlio long o by ‘oo’; and tlio long u by ‘w’. With tlie establishment of the press at Hrappsöy in 1773 tho introduction of tlie proper long-vowel characters (á, i, ó, ú, ý) bogan, but tliey wero not omployed with regularity until the days of the Vffioy printing establishmont, and even then not in the form of capitals. The Danish ‘o’, during the entiro period covered by this list, was moro usual than tho equivalent ‘ö’. A peculiar lotter was the ‘p’ (/or //'), which however, was discarded bofore tlie middle of tho last contury; it occasionally occúrred as a capital. Thore was no distinction between ‘d’ and ‘ð’, the former doing duty for both; it was only with tlio disuse of the Gothic lotter that ‘ð’ took its permanent placo in thú printor’s caso. For the capital of the othor dental aspirate, ‘Þ’, a capital ‘P’ was fre- quently usod, the differonce betweon the two boing less noticeable in tlie Gothic than in the Latin typo; and a single character, as ordinarily in black letter, did servico for tlio two capitals I and J; but in transcribing titles I have, in most instances, roproduced these last two capitals in accordance with modern usago, and have always replaced the ineorroct p by Þ. A characteristic feature of books from the XVIth to the XVIIIth contury was tho profuso employmont of ornaments—head-pioces, tail-pieces (stylod in Icelandic bókarhnútar, “book-knots”), ornamental daslies, and large initials at tlio beginning of chapters or soctions. The wood engravings so often found in popular religious works aro, witli fow excoptions, of Gcrman origin, and wero procurod, jiorhaps, by way of Hamburg.

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