In the Ulm Bible the letter is much fresher and the border-line very little broken, but our reproduction is from an impression made when it was much the worse for wear, and had passed into the hands of Hupfuff of Strasburg. It has been used by him without any kind of _apropos_, not as an initial but as a frontispiece to a tract published in 1507 with the following title: _Canon Sacratissime Misse una cū; Expositione ejusdem ubi in primis praemittitur pulchra contemplatio ante missam habenda de Cristi pulchritudine_.[16] [16] On the title-page of a little pamphlet entitled ‘Deploration sur le Trepas de tres noble Princesse Madame Magdalain de France Royne Descoce,’ of which only one copy is known, the frontispiece is a B showing the Queen holding up a dagger, and with the motto ‘Memento mori.’ Every student of bibliography has met with instances of the use of illustrations having no reference to the text, simply to fill up a space and because nothing more suitable was at hand. Cuts, for instance, from Brandt’s illustrations to Grüninger’s Virgil are to be found in some volumes of Geyler’s Sermons. The same indifference to the reader’s opinion was often displayed in connection with ornamental letters. When the letter is simply ornamental it does not much matter: a C turned over becomes a D, and _vice versâ_. An M at a pinch serves reversed as a W, an N on its side does for a Z. But when, as is sometimes the case, the letter taken liberties with is pictorial or historiated, the resulting effect is far from artistic. Here there is, of course, no absolute incompatibility between text and illustration, which was probably considered a very satisfactory makeshift for the cut which often adorns the recto or verso of contemporary title-pages, representing the author presenting his book to a patron. In 1496 J. Reger published books with initials, of which we have selected the M, the C, and the S. They come from the _Obsidionis Rhodie Urbis descriptio_ of Caoursin, a work very much sought after on account of its full-page woodcuts, some of which represent incidents in the siege, others the entertainment of an ambassador by the Grand Master. The M and the C are the only letters with animated subjects; the others, R, H, N, and G are simply foliated, and the proofs are too inferior for reproduction. The same printer has another book of the same date about Rhodes, the _Stabilimenta Rhodiorum militum_, with three interesting initials, an F, a boy with a dog, an O, a naked winged babe, and an X, a bird with foliage.