A further consideration is emphasised by means of these papyrus discoveries—viz. that =no distinction of time= can be drawn between the uncial and cursive hands found in the manuscripts. Even in the very earliest documents the hand of common life displays a very cursive character, and a fairly cursive uncial hand with ligatures is not necessarily later than an uncial hand without ligatures. It is somewhat different in the case of writing on parchment: here the old distinction of uncial and minuscule manuscripts is rightly maintained, only we must guard against supposing that the minuscule hand and the cursive are quite the same thing; nor must we forget that for a considerable time the older uncial and the later minuscule scripts were in use together.[75] The sharp line of demarcation, therefore, which has hitherto been drawn in the textual criticism of the New Testament between these two classes of manuscripts has no real justification in fact. The present account, however, is intended merely as a survey of the position of things up to the present, and the following description of the minuscules is subject to that limitation. (_b._) SOME OF THE MORE IMPORTANT MINUSCULES. [Sidenote: Minuscules.] When the Greek New Testament began to be printed, the editors had necessarily to be content with indifferent and late minuscules, and even those who followed them, like Bentley and Lachmann, thought they were at liberty to disregard these altogether and to found their text exclusively on the oldest uncials. They forgot that the text of a late manuscript may be derived from a very early and good source through comparatively few intermediaries, and that it is possible to reconstruct a lost original by means of a comparison of several witnesses. Accordingly, in more recent times, English editors like Tregelles, Burgon, Ferrar, Hoskier, and Scrivener have rendered great service in the way of collating manuscripts, and the last-mentioned as well as Gregory in Germany has also catalogued them. At the present moment a systematic investigation in this department is being carried on in Berlin. Most of the minuscules are still written on parchment which began to be mixed with paper in the ninth century, and was ultimately superseded by it. Various minuscules contain commentaries and other additional matter, such as the List of the Seventy Apostles, short Biographies of the Apostles, Summaries of the journeys of St. Paul, or notes as to the date and place of the composition of the different books. When dates are given in the manuscripts, they are still as a rule computed in the Byzantine manner, reckoning from the Creation of the world (5508 B.C.). In only a few cursives is the date reckoned from the Birth of Christ.