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the picture poster was an incident of the ancient civilizations of China and Japan goes without saying. The scope, however, of this book does not embrace the Far East; the illustrated placard in the Orient would, indeed, be a subject in itself. In the matter of applied art it is difficult to conceive anything which the Chinese and the Japanese have not attempted. They seem, from the earliest days, to have been consumed with a passion for decoration; nothing which by any chance admitted of ornament was left underrated. It behoves the societies which are formed for the purpose of illustrating the artistic antiquities of these wonderful countries to concern themselves with the dawn and history of the pictorial poster in the East. Certain it is that the illustrated advertisement abounded, as it abounds today, in the cities of both the nations now being discussed. It is, indeed, found in the less advanced civilization of Burma, and of