Primitive Dutch and Flemish book-illustrations when compared with German ones exhibit just the general likeness and specific differences which we might expect in the work of such near neighbours. The Low Country wood-cutters are on the whole more decorative than the Germans, they were more influenced by the work of the engravers on copper, and they were attracted by different types of the human figure, the faces and bodies of the men and women they drew being often long and thin, and often also showing a slightly fantastic touch rarely found in German work. Unfortunately, these Low Country illustrated books are even rarer than the German ones, far fewer of them have found their way to England, and no attempt has been made to reproduce a really representative selection of them in facsimile. In 1884 Sir W. M. Conway, as the result of prolonged studies on the Continent, wrote an excellent account of these illustrations and the makers of them under the title, _The Woodcutters of the Netherlands in the Fifteenth Century_, which was unhappily allowed to appear without any facsimiles to elucidate the text. Thus the study of these Low Country illustrated books is still difficult. [Illustration: XI. ZINNA. MONASTERIUM CISTERCIENSE, C. 1493 NITSCHEWITZ. PSALTERIUM BEATAE MARIAE VIRGINIS FREDERICK AND MAXIMILIAN] In the production of the early block-books (see Chapter II) the Low Countries had played a principal part, and we meet again with traces of them in later illustrated books, cuts from the _Biblia Pauperum_ being used by Peter van Os at Zwolle in his _Episteln ende Evangelien_ of 5 January, 1487, and one from the _Canticum Canticorum_ in his edition of Mauberne's _Rosetum Exercitiorum Spiritualium_ in 1494. Two cut-up pieces from the block-book _Speculum Humanae Saluationis_ were used by Veldener in his _Episteln ende Evangelien_ completed at Utrecht 19 April, 1481, and all the old blocks, each divided in two, in a new edition of the _Speculum_ printed at Kuilenburg 27 September, 1483, with twelve new cuts added to them. Sir W. M. Conway has also shown that a set of sixty-four cuts used in a _Boec van der Houte_ or Legend of the Holy Cross, issued by Veldener at Kuilenburg earlier in 1483 (on 6 March), must have been obtained by dividing in a similar manner the double cuts of a block-book now entirely lost.