The illustration on the following page is a fac-simile, but reduced in size, of the first page of the edition published in the year 1470, at Nordlingen, by Walther and Hurning. The panel in the centre of this fac-simile represents the Annunciation; on the left is the Temptation of Eve; on the right is Gideon with the Fleece. The busts at the top are those of Isaiah and David; at the foot, Hezekiah and Jeremiah. This edition, like the one previously noticed, was printed in rusty brown ink upon one side of the paper. The adherence of the printers to a rough method of printing seems strange when we consider that typographic books, printed with black ink and on both sides of the paper, were then known and sold in every part of civilized Europe. Walther and Hurning were, probably, printers of cards and images who tried to compete with typography.[111] Incompetent to practise the new art, and unable to make fine books, they made a German translation of the _Bible of the Poor_, and tried to sell it to German people. The Nordlingen edition is an obvious imitation of the Latin edition previously described, but it is a very feeble imitation. The designer was incompetent to his task, and the engraver was clumsy. The workmanship of this book is one of many [p210] evidences which might be offered to prove that coarseness of engraving in undated block-books is by no means proof of their greater age. The facts point the other way. The block-books which contain engravings of high merit are, as a rule, the oldest; those made in the third or fourth quarter of the fifteenth century show decided decline in skill. Mean as this book is, it does not fully show the degradation that printing subsequently suffered from the hands of unskillful engravers. [Illustration: First Page of the Bible of the Poor as made by Walther and Hurning of Nordlingen, 1470. The size of this print, in the original, is 7 by 10-1/8 American inches. [From Heineken.]] THE APOCALYPSE OF ST. JOHN. This is the name of an early block-book almost as famous as the _Bible of the Poor_, and of which there are at least six distinct xylographic editions. Some of them have fifty, and others have forty-eight leaves, printed upon one side only of the leaf. The dissimilarities in the designs and the engraving of these editions are decided and unmistakable: they are, no doubt, impressions from different suites of blocks, and each edition may be regarded as the work of a different printer.