As so little is known respecting the country where, and the precise time when, the principal block-books appeared,--of which the History of the Virgin is one,--I think every particular, however trifling, which may be likely to afford even a gleam of light, deserving of notice. It is for this reason that I have given the different shields contained in this and the preceding pages; not in the belief that I have made any important discovery, or established any considerable facts; but with the desire of directing to this subject the attention of others, whose further inquiries and comparisons may perhaps establish such a perfect identity between the arms of a particular district, and those contained in the volume, as may determine the probable locality of the place where it was executed. The coincidences which I have noticed were not sought for. Happening to be turning over Sebastian Munster’s Cosmography when a copy of the History of the Virgin was before me, I observed that the two fish in the arms of the Counts of Wirtemberg,[II-50] and those in the 15th folio of the History, were the same. The other instances of correspondence were also discovered without search, from having occasionally, in tracing the progress of wood engraving, to refer to Merian’s Topographia. [Footnote II-50: Those arms are to be seen in Sebastiana Munsteri Cosmographia, cap. De Regione Wirtenbergensi, p. 592. Folio, Basiliæ, apud Henrichum Petri, 1554.] Considering the thickness of the paper on which the block-books are printed,--if I may apply this term to them,--and the thin-bodied ink which has been used. I am at a loss to conceive how the early wood-engravers have contrived to take off their impressions so correctly; for in all the block-books which I have seen, where friction has evidently been the means employed to obtain the impression, I have only noticed two subjects in which the lines appeared double in consequence of the shifting of the paper. From the want of body in the ink, which appears in the Apocalypse to have been little more than water-colour, it is not likely the paper could be used in a damp state, otherwise the ink would run or spread; and, even if this difficulty did not exist, the paper in a damp state could not have borne the excessive rubbing which it appears to have received in order to obtain the impression.[II-51] Even with such printer’s ink as is used in the present day,--which being tenacious, renders the paper in taking an impression by means of friction much less liable to slip or shift,--it would be difficult to obtain clear impressions on thick paper from blocks the size of those which form each page of the Apocalypse, or the History of the Virgin.