The Washington union. [volume] (City of Washington [D.C.]) 1857-1859, 1857-10-17
STATISTICS OF HOLLAND FOR lS57-PUBIIC
PRINTING IN THE UNITED STATES.

PRlNI1NG In HE UNIIED cIhlEHo .
The Department Of the Interior Of Holland has is
sued from the Royal Bureau Of the Hague the
Statistical Annual of the Kingdom Of the Netherlands
for 1857. The predecessors Of this excellent volume
were published in form (duodecimo) totally insult
cient for the extensive statistical tables especially
the tables Of population with which the little plump,
square-rgged book hitherto published, literally
crammed. We have now before one of these un-
couth volumes, in which many of the tabular sheets,
when unfolded for inspection, are some half dozen
times larger than the form of the book. This has
rendered any reference to these tables, especially
for analytical examination exceedingly announcement;
so much So indeed that, if we find the facts or
information required elsewhere, we seldom choose
to encounter the trouble or risk the delay Of unfold
ing and restoring them to their original position in
the volume. This announcements entirely obviated
in the quarto before us, which, besides, combines
30 many other mechanical advantages over the
elder volumes that the Statistical Bureau of the
Hague may now claim rank, respects its annual
publications, with those Of Stockholm Brussels,
London or Paris. We do not include Washington,
because 1t is admitted by the leading periodicals and
journals of Europe as well as of the United States
that the State Department Reports For
eign Commerce. as well as the statistical and
scientific reports from the other executive de-
partments of our government, issued during the
past few years from the press of the public printer,
Mr. Cornelius Wendell, are ncomparably superior,
in point of form, arrangement general execution and
style of finish to the similar official statistical publ
cations of any other country in the world and this
superiority is not confined to the form, general ar
rangement of the tabular work. OF even to the admit
rable classification of the valuable and varied contents
for which the congressional Committee on Printing
and the respective departments from which the reports
emanate may Justly claim the chief credit 1t enters
into the minutest arcana of the printers craft and is
manifest in the almost faultcss display Of all that
constitutes beautiful typography. But the main fea-
ture in which the American official statistical reports
excel those of other countries consists in the admit
rable combination of head and hand-work in the bu-
reaus of the departments, and in the Offices Of the
public printer, by which they can be transferred
from the hands OF the binder to the shelves of the
private library, and thus be preserved as well for
ornament as for use in the future and this feature
forms the subject of special commentator in the
complimentary notices of these volumes which, from
time to timo, we have seen in the Athenaum Econo-
mist Journal des Eoonomistes, and other leading pub
LEGATIONS OF London and Paris and ecits from the
press of our own country encomiums which De
Bows Review for the present month, in its notice
of vol III of the State Department report on foreign
commerce, up with no less brevity than truth,
in the very just compliment which tpays to the pub
lie printer for supplying it with "a quarto so hand
somely printed and bound. With respect to the vol