But we must now subject our fragment to internal tests. If Aldus used the entire manuscript of which this is a part, his text must show a general conformity to that of the fragment. An examination of the appended collation will establish this fact beyond a doubt. The references are to Keil’s critical edition of 1870, but the readings are verified from Merrill’s apparatus. I will designate the fragment as _Π_, using _P_ for Aldus’s Parisinus and _a_ for his edition. {Transcriber’s Note: In the following paragraph, letters originally printed in roman (non-italic) type are capitalized for clarity.} We may begin by excluding two probable misprints in Aldus, 64, 1 _contuRbernium_ and 65, 17 _subEuertas_. Then there are various spellings in which Aldus adheres to the fashion of his day, as _seXcenties_, _miLLies_, _miLLia_, _teNtarunt_, _cauSSas_, _auToritas_, _quaNquam_, _sYderum_, _hYeme_, _cOEna_, _oCium_, _hospiCii_, _negoCiis_, _solaTium_, _adUlescet_, _eXoluit_, _THuscos_; there are other spellings which modern editors might not disdain, _i.e._, _aerarII_ and _iLLustri_, and some that they have accepted, namely _aPPonitur_, _eXistat_, _iMpleturus_, _iMplorantes_, _oBtulissem_, _balInei_, _Caret_ (not _Karet_), _Caritas_ (not _Karitas_).[18] [Footnote 18: The spellings _Karet_ and _Karitas_, whether Pliny’s or not, are a sign of antiquity. In the first century A.D., as we see from Velius Longus (p. 53, 12 K) and Quintilian (I, 7, 10), certain old-timers clung to the use of _k_ for _c_ when the vowel _a_ followed. By the fourth century, theorists of the opposite tendency proposed the abandonment of _k_ and _q_ as superfluous letters, since their functions were performed by _c_. Donatus (p. 368, 7 K) and Diomedes, too, according to Keil (p. 423, 11), still believed in the rule of _ka_ for _ca_, but these rigid critics had passed away in the time of Servius, who, in his commentary on Donatus (p. 422, 35 K), remarks _k vero et q aliter nos utimur, aliter usi sunt maiores nostri. Namque illi, quotienscumque a sequebatur, k praeponebant in omni parte orationis, ut Kaput et similia; nos vero non usurpamus k litteram nisi in Kalendarum nomine scribendo._ See also Cledonius (p. 28, 5K); W. Brambach, _Latein. Orthog._ 1868, pp. 210 ff.; W.M. Lindsay, _The Latin Language_, 1894, pp. 6 f. There would thus be no temptation for a scribe at the end of the fifth century or the beginning of the sixth to adopt _ka_ for _ca_ as a habit. The writer of our fragment was copying faithfully from his original a spelling that he apparently would not have used himself. There are various other cases of _ca_ in our text (_e.g._, _calceos_, III, i, 4; _canere_, 11), but there we find the usual spelling. On traces of _ka_ in the Bellovacensis, see below, p. 57. I should not be surprised if Pliny himself employed the spelling _ka_, which was gradually modified in the successive copies