william smellie had printed a first run of pages as far as the gathering or signature 'mm' (page 281) when he discovered that he had insufficient copies to cover all the subscribers and due to a shortage of type he was forced to reset the printing blocks and repeat the run as a partial second impression. burns had remarked that smellie was also publishing a gaelic bible and a hebrew grammar. in the haste to reset the blocks a large number of mainly minor errors were introduced, the most famous of which is the substitution of a 't' for a 'k' that converted the scots word 'skinking' (meaning watery) into 'stinking'. this error has resulted in the term "stinking burns" or the "stinking edition" being applied to this rarer impression, around 1000 out of 3000 copies being so altered.