The discovery of the history of Joseph, Daniel, Judith, and Esther, with the date 1462, printed at Bamberg by Pfister, has established the fact that the dates refer to the years in which the books were printed, and not to the period when the works were composed or transcribed. An account of the history above named, written by M. J. Steiner, pastor of the church of St. Ulric at Augsburg, was first printed in Meusel’s Historical and Literary Magazine in 1792; and a more ample description of this and other tracts printed by Pfister was published by Camus in 1800,[IV-11] when the volume containing them, which was the identical one that had been previously seen by Steiner, was deposited in the National Library at Paris. [Footnote IV-11: Under the title of “Notice d’un Livre imprimé à Bamberg en CIↃCCCCLXII. lue à l’Institut National, par Camus.” 4to. Paris, An VII. [1800.]] The book of fables[IV-12] printed by Pfister at Bamberg in 1461 is a small folio consisting of twenty-eight leaves, and containing eighty-five fables in rhyme in the old German language. As those fables, which are ascribed to one “Boner, dictus der Edelstein,” are known to have been written previous to 1330, the words at the end of the volume,--“Zu Bamberg dies Büchlein geendet ist,”--At Bamberg this book is finished,--most certainly relate to the time when it was printed, and not when it was written. It is therefore the earliest book printed with moveable types which is illustrated with wood-cuts containing figures. Not having an opportunity of seeing this extremely rare book,--of which only one perfect copy is known,--I am unable to speak from personal examination of the style in which its hundred and one cuts are engraved. Heineken, however, has given a fac-simile of the first, and he says that the others are of a similar kind. The following is a reduced copy of the fac-simile given by Heineken, and which forms the head-piece to the first fable. On the manner in which it is engraved I shall make no remark, until I shall have produced some specimens of the cuts contained in a “Biblia Pauperum Predicatorum,” also printed by Pfister, and having the text in the German language. [Footnote IV-12: The copy of those fables belonging to the Wolfenbuttel Library, and which is the only one known, was taken away by the French and placed in the National Library at Paris, but was restored on the surrender of Paris in 1815.] [Illustration]