Produced by Chris Curnow, Sonya Schermann and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
Italics are surrounded with _ _ and Greek words have been transliterated and surrounded with # #. Isolated Greek letters have been replaced by the name of the letter (e.g. alpha). The oe ligature has been replaced by the letters oe. Subscripted characters have been preceded by _ and surrounded with { } Fractions have been represented as 1-1/2 (for one and one-half) and where a range of fractions has been specified, the numbers have been surrounded by { } to prevent confusion (i.e. { 3-1/2}-{ 4-1/2} represents the range three and one-half to four and one-half.) Dittos and dashes used to represent text have been replaced with the indicated text.
Some presumed printer's errors have been corrected. In particular, the use of c.c. has been normalized when periods were missing, the degree symbol (°) has been added when it appears to have been missing, and words and numbers in the Index were changed to match the spelling and placement in the body of the text. Some additional presumed errors which have been corrected are listed below with the original text (top) and the replacement text (bottom):
Table of Contents Literature xiv Literature xiii
Footnote 1 "Lexikon d. gesamsen Technik," "Lexikon d. gesamten Technik,"
Time, which antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things, hath yet spared these minor monuments.
(SIR THOMAS BROWNE, _Hydriotaphia_, cap. v.)
TRANSLATED, BY PERMISSION OF THE AUTHORITIES OF THE ROYAL MUSEUMS, FROM THE GERMAN OF
Director of the Laboratory of the Royal Museums, Berlin
HAROLD A. AUDEN, M.Sc. (Vict.), D.Sc. (Tübingen)
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, C. F. CLAY, MANAGER.
Bombay and Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
The increasing recognition of the importance of the preservation of antiquities justifies the publication of a handbook dealing with this subject. As far as I can ascertain, with the exception of a short article[1] for which I am myself responsible, only one work has appeared which covers the whole field--the "Merkbuch[2]" prepared by Dr Voss at the request of the Government. But as this book only gives a selection of the known methods of preservation, the need of a more comprehensive publication will scarcely be denied.