Macao: Presbyterian Mission Press, 1844. First edition (one of 500 copies). 4to. 110 pp. (p. 4 misnumbered as p. 3). Full red morocco, stamped in gilt, corners lightly worn; all edges trimmed; by Albert Oldach, Philadelphia, PA; title-page worn, repaired, and laid down on japanese paper; numerous leaves repaired, and laid down on japanese paper; most leaves brittle; scattered chipping and short closed tears; book-plate on front paste-down; "Presbyterian Historical Society" ink stamp on front free endpaper. Only two copies located in OCLC. Rare

One of the earliest volumes of samples of Chinese specimens produced by U.S. Missionaries in China, and used by the printers of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States in their evangilizing efforts in China. One of around 500 copies ever produced: "There have been printed, also, 500 copies of a specimen book, 44 pages, 8vo, containing the elements of the font; and 500 copies, in 4to, 110 pages, containing a list of all the characters, amounting to 22,841, that can be formed by the different combinations of the type then on hand. These are works of much importance..." (Eighth Annual Report of the Board of Foreign Missions, May, 1845).

Due to the Chinese government making the printing of books on the Christian religion a capital offense, as well as the teaching of the Chinese language to foreigners illegal, missionaries, like the Presbyterians above, often worked in peripheral areas of China to print and distribute their work. The first Protestant missionaries sprung up in Portuguese Macao and in Guangzhou in the early nineteenth-century, largely by the efforts of Protestant missionary Robert Morrison (1782-1834).

No copies have ever come to auction.