Von Murr, who also cites from the 'Güldin Spil' the preceding passage relating to cards, thinks that the epoch assigned, 1300, is at least fifty years too early.[90] He, however, states that he found cards--_Carten_--mentioned in an old book of bye-laws and regulations of the city of Nuremberg, to which he assigns a date between 1380 and 1384. The word occurs in a bye-law relating to gaming--'_Vom Spil_'--from the penalties of which the following games are, under certain circumstances, excepted: "Horse-racing, shooting with cross-bows, _cards_, shovel-board, tric-trac, and bowls, at which a man may bet from two pence to a groat." Whether the date assigned by Von Murr be correct or not, I am unable to determine. His reason for concluding that it was between the years 1380 and 1384, is as follows: "There is indeed no date to this bye-law, but it is written in the same hand as a law relating to the Toll-houses before the New Gate; and at folio 4 there is a precise date, namely the second day before Walpurg's day, 1384." The reason is not a very good one; for, even admitting the identity of the hand-writing in the ordinance relating to gaming, and in the act of 1381 relating to the toll-houses, yet both might have been copied into the book at a subsequent period. It is also to be observed, that, according to Von Murr's own account, the date 1384 occurs in the fourth folio, while the ordinance in which cards are mentioned, is in the _sixteenth_ folio. But though the date assigned by Von Murr to the Nuremberg regulation, may be a few years too early, there is good reason to believe that cards were well known in Germany towards the conclusion of the fourteenth century. According to Mons. Neubronner, administrator at Ulm, (about 1806,) there was in the archives of that city an ancient parchment volume, called the Red Book, on account of its red initial letters, which contained a prohibition against Card Playing, dated 1397.[91] Having now laid before the reader the principal authorities which have been alleged by various writers,--whether for the purpose of showing the antiquity of card-playing in Europe generally, or with the design of supporting their own opinion as to the invention of cards in some particular country--it is now time to enter on what may be termed the positive history of cards, beginning from the year 1393.