{The evolution of the Palatino tribe} {Robert Bringhurst} {Palatino is not just a single typeface but a large and varied group of faces: a taxonomic tribe produced over more than half a century. The members include Aldus, Enge Aldus, Aldus Nova, Heraklit, Michelangelo, Phidias, Sistina, and Zapf Renaissance, as well as foundry Palatino, Linotype Palatino, American Export Palatino, Linofilm Palatino, PostScript Palatino, Palatino Nova, and Palatino Sans. This constellation of type designs was Hermann Zapf's most ambitious and enduring design project. It began with the ``Medici'' sketches of 1948\Dash which led to the first trial cutting of foundry Palatino roman by August Rosenberger at the Stempel Foundry, Frankfurt, in 1949 \Dash and it continued through 2006, when the last authentic members of the group were drawn on screen under Zapf's direction by Akira Kobayashi in Bad Homburg. In between these dates, the underlying designs adapted again and again to changing conditions, represented by the Linotype machine, Linofilm and other phototype machines, and a variety of pre-Postscript digital systems. Zapf was not the only type designer whose career spanned the tumultuous transitions from metal type to phototype to digital type, but Palatino and its relatives appear to be unique in the complexity of their evolution and the multiplicity of their successive adaptations, under the hand of the original designer, to repeatedly changing methods of typesetting and printing. Robert Bringhurst has argued for many years that the most promising system of typeface classification is based on botanical and zoological taxonomies. His new book, {\sl Palatino: The Natural History of a Typeface}, to be published this summer by the Book Club of California, is an extended test of this thesis. Over many years of research, he has also accumulated hundreds of illustrations documenting the artistry and care, and the industrial advances and collapses, involved in creating these components of our typographic heritage. }