Gold Leaf, gold beaten into sheets. It is much used for gilding books, gold leaf printing, and the like. The making of gold leaf is an art in itself. The gold is first rolled out into a ribbon, then cut into small squares, which are piled up alternately with pieces of goldbeater's skin. The pile is placed on a solid stone anvil, and beaten with heavy hammers, first one of sixteen pounds' weight, and then eight, and so on, until the small squares of gold extend to the edges of the skins. The gold is then removed, repiled, hammered again, and cut into small squares. The process is repeated until the gold has reached the desired degree of thinness. A workman spends about three days, including changes, in working a ribbon of fifty pennyweights of gold into leaf. Standard leaves of gold are three and three-eighths inches square. They are put up in little books of twentyfive leaves each, twenty books in a pack. The incredible number of 254,248 sheets of ordinary leaves make an inch in thickness. Even this number may be increased by one-half. Attempts to do the work by machinery have failed to secure satisfactory results.