Let us take down this enormous volume, and see what it contains. The whole of the Books of Genesis and Exodus, with beautifully printed notes, and spaces for other notes, which have never been put in. Look how straight and neat and symmetrical the columns of printing are, and the spaces between them. How did the monks manage this, do you think? See, these tiny punctures in the vellum, like tiny pin-pricks, tell us. They used a little wheel with tiny spikes in the rim, to space their columns. Here is an ancient book of devotion. To whom did it belong? Open it and you will find out, for ‘H. Latimer’ is written inside--he who died for his belief at Worcester. Here is the ‘Neuremberg Chronicle,’ a famous book in bygone days, for it was almost the only picture-book that children had, and it contains two thousand quaint woodcuts, showing the progress of the world from the Creation down to the time it was written. Here is a ‘Breeches’ Bible, which gets its name from the fact that the printer has printed that Adam and Eve made themselves ‘breeches’ instead of ‘aprons’; and near it is a ‘Cider’ Bible, which was printed by a man named Nicolas de Hereford, who was so accustomed to the beverage used in his native county that he translated the verse in Judges, which tells us that Sampson’s mother was to drink no strong drink, by ‘drink no cider.’ Here we can see William the Conqueror’s seal, and here is that of Oliver Cromwell. Indeed, there are so many interesting and curious things to be seen in the chained library at Hereford that a book could be written about them alone. BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Hereford, by Elizabeth W. Grierson