After 1460, it is not always easy to determine whether the specifications of the prices paid for books refer to manuscripts or to printed copies. On the 27th of March, 1485, Rudolph Agricola, the librarian of the Elector of the Palatinate, writes to his friend Adolph Rusch, a bookseller from Strasburg who was at that time in Frankfort, ordering for his library copies of the following books: Columella, _De Re Rustica_; Celsus, _De Medicina_; _Macrobii Saturnalia_, _Statii_, _Opera_, and Silius Italicus. It is certain, says Kirchhoff, that these books had not yet been printed in Germany, and he is, therefore, of opinion that Agricola was expecting to secure manuscripts. Kapp points out, however, that certain of them had already been printed in Italy; _Columella_, for instance, had been published in a volume with _Cato_ and _Varro_, in Venice in 1472, and in Reggio in 1482. _Celsus_ appeared in Florence in 1478, and in Milan in 1481; _Macrobius_, in Venice in 1472 and 1483; _Statius_ in Rome in 1476, in Milan in 1483; _Silius_ in Rome, in 1471, in Milan in 1480, and in Parma in 1481. It seems probable that, in connection with the correspondence between the scholars of Italy and the instructors in the University of Heidelberg, news might very easily have come to the librarian of the Elector of these important classical undertakings, and that he had naturally desired to secure copies of the books for the Elector’s library. As far as I can understand from the reference made by Kapp, there is no record of the result of this order or inquiry, or of the prices at which Agricola secured or hoped to secure the books in question. It was undoubtedly the case that, as the work of the printers, both German and Italian, came to be known to the book collectors, there was a steady decrease in the prices paid for manuscripts, until the business of the manuscript-dealers came to be limited to the sale as curiosities of old codices, and the work of the scribes in the reproduction of copies ceased altogether.