The National Library in Paris contains two manuscripts of the Bible in Latin and French text, written on parchment, which Firmin Didot appraised as having cost to produce not less than the equivalent of 82,000 francs. He excludes from this calculation of cost the price of the parchment, the hire of the scribes, and the cost of the binding. The principal item of the outlay for the more valuable of these manuscripts was incurred in the production of the 5,000 designs illuminated in gold and colour, the cost of preparing which Didot estimated at over 12,000 francs. As before pointed out, the exceptional outlay incurred in the production of these illuminated manuscripts cannot be taken as in any way a guide for the average market price of manuscripts prepared for general circulation and sale. The text-books, chap-books, etc., which, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were prepared for the common folk, sold at prices that seem very low when one bears in mind the large amount of manual labour required for their production. The school ordinance of the town of Bautzen (in Saxony) of 1418 fixed the price of an _A B C_ book, containing also a _Paternoster_, at one groschen; of a _Doctrinal_, a half mark; and of a _Donatus_, ten groschens. At this time, however, the market price in the same region for a hen was one pfennig, for a pound of beef two pfennigs, for a loaf of bread, containing rations for three men for one day, three pfennigs, for a pound of cheese one pfennig, for a measure of the best wine one kreutzer. From this date on, however, there came to be, with the increase in the production of manuscript books in the common text, a very steady decrease in the selling price of such books. At the end of the fourteenth century the average price in Italy for a well written copy of the _Corpus Juris_ was 480 marks. In 1451, such a copy was sold in Florence for 14½ ducats, the equivalent of 90 marks. In 1400, a manuscript containing writings of Justinian, Sallust, and Suetonius, written on 115 folio sheets of parchment, was sold in Florence for 16 ducats, the equivalent of 100 marks. In 1467, a copy of the comedies of Terence, written on 198 folio sheets (paper, however, instead of parchment), was bought in Heidelberg for three gulden. By this date, sixteen years, namely, after the printing of Gutenberg’s first volume, the competition or the expectation of the competition of the printing-press, had already begun to affect the market prices of manuscripts. In 1499, there is record of the sale in Heidelberg for the price of two gulden, of a manuscript comprising 134 quarto sheets, containing the _Hecuba_ of Euripides, and the _Idyls_ of Theocritus.