[Illustration: BOOK-PLATE OF HILDEBRANDE BRANDENBURG.] Following, in point of date, closely after this curious book-plate, comes a small woodcut, representing an angel who holds a shield, on which is displayed a black ox, with a ring passed through its nose--the arms of the Brandenburg family. A written inscription beneath it states that the book for which it was intended, and in which it was found, belonged to Hildebrande Brandenburg of Biberach, who presented it to the Carthusian monastery of Buxheim, of which he was a monk. This book-plate, which is rudely coloured, is struck off on scraps of paper, printed on one side; a curious illustration of the then scarcity of that material. Oddly enough, another very early book-plate--probably of almost the same date as the last--was also found in a book which belonged to the same monastery, and which had been given to it by Wilhelm von Zell. This book-plate also is anonymous; but the volumes that contained it, as in the last case, bear a written inscription, recording the fact that they belonged to the monastery in question, and were the gift of the person whose arms are figured in the book-plate inserted. From the fact that two of the three known fifteenth century book-plates are connected with the monastery at Buxheim, it would seem as if the use of a book-plate commended itself to the librarian of that monastery, who commemorated the gifts of volumes by a book-plate bearing the donor's arms. In the sixteenth century, German book-plates became numerous, and of their beauty there can be no doubt. There is a difficulty, however, in accepting many of the early armorial woodcuts which one finds; and it is this: Suppose the example is no longer doing duty in a volume as a book-plate, there is really no means of being assured that the cut of arms is a book-plate at all; for very many of these plates are void of any inscription, save perhaps a text or motto. Some of these book-plates are probably the work, or from the design, of Albert Dürer. He certainly produced some undoubted examples; the earliest, actually dated, in 1516. This is the Ebner book-plate (see p. 119). The inscription on this leaves us in no doubt as to its intended use: 'Liber Hieronimi Ebner, 1516.'