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Rh number of words, but a complete collection has never been attempted beyond the Chinese Empire.

The type-foundry attached to the National Printing Office at Paris, which founded types for 43,000 distinct characters, has, probably, reached the highest practicable number; but this performance was accomplished only by repeated alterations of punches and matrices. The punches were cut on wood, and pressed in prepared plaster. The matrices so made were broken when a sufficient quantity of types had been cast from them. By shortening or cutting off a line or lines, the old punches were altered to form new characters. The matrices, also, after they had received the prints of these punches, were sometimes altered by the