'Of course,' the entomologist hastened to explain, 'no one could possibly tell that it was not my grandfather's. He had a very fine collection, and probably there was more than one Large Copper in it, though there was only the one in the cabinet that came to me. I shall never forget my feelings when it happened. I had taken it out of the drawer to show to a friend, when we both saw, outside the window, what we thought was an _Antiopa_. We rushed out, and when we came back we found that the cat. . . . Dear me; I was quite overcome. . . . But that summer I caught the one you have seen in Switzerland; and as my dear friend was no more and nobody else knew of the catastrophe, I thought there would be no harm in merely restoring a specimen to my grandfather's collection.'
But the bookman pointed out to him that when he died and his collection was sold his family would benefit by some pounds through his indiscretion; for it was now known to all his friends as a genuine English specimen. This troubled the entomologist greatly, for it was a point of view that had never occurred to him, and, like the rich young man, 'he went away grieved.'
So it is sometimes in book-collecting: there is a temptation to 'restore' an incomplete book. Should the collector find that his copy of a certain work lacks a portrait, what is more natural than to go to the print-shop and purchase a portrait of the same individual for insertion in his copy? And in this there may be little harm, provided that the book is of no value _and that he makes a note in ink inside the front cover as to what he has done_. But occasionally some unscrupulous book-fiend--he is, of course, no true book-collector--substitutes for a damaged page a page from another copy, or perhaps of a later edition; sometimes he supplies his volume with a spurious title-page or other leaf; and, worst of all, substitutes in his copy of the second edition, whereof the title-page is damaged, the title-page of a first edition, of which he possesses an incomplete copy.
And here let me utter a word of warning. Apparently it is the practice of certain cheap second-hand booksellers to abstract the engraved plates from folio books, occasionally also removing the 'List of Plates' that the theft may remain undiscovered, and to sell the works thus mutilated as sound and perfect copies. Needless to say to the print collector such plates are invariably worth a shilling or two apiece, if portraits considerably more. I know to my cost one London bookseller who habitually removes the engraved portraits with which certain seventeenth-century folios, especially historical ones, are wont to be embellished. How many rare volumes this ghoul has ruined it is impossible to say, probably some hundreds. Our book-hunter confesses to having been caught by him three times, discovering the reason for the cheapness of his bargains (!) some time later. A friend has also suffered from his attentions. I need hardly add that his shop is now avoided, by two book-hunters at least, as something unclean.