There can be no doubt that the legend began with this pedigree. It is not at all probable that the vain old man Gerrit Thomaszoon, who was proud of the ancestor in whose house he lived, kept his friends in ignorance of it. It was not unknown to Junius. There is a similarity of uncertainty between an ambiguous date (1440 or 1446) on this pedigree and the mysterious circumlocution of Junius in his use of the words “about one hundred and twenty-eight years ago,” or 1440, which is enough to show that Junius had not only seen the pedigree, but that he took it as an authority for this date. Whether Scriverius saw it cannot be confidently maintained; he does not mention it. Gerard Meerman knew of its existence, but he did not reprint it. He made use of it, however, in the construction of a new genealogy of the Coster family, in which he added and altered items in the most unwarrantable manner. Koning studied it with diligence: he frequently alluded to it as a document of the highest importance, but he did not reprint it, nor even describe it in general terms. The withholding of this pedigree from public examination, and the evasion of its description by the authors who had [p363] examined it, are suspicious circumstances. We see that men who wrote hundreds of pages of speculations to support the claims of Coster—men who translated and reprinted many columns of irrelevant chaff for the sake of one little kernel of grain—willfully suppressed what they maintained was a most convincing evidence of the truth of the legend. It was not suppressed because it was too long: the entire pedigree can be printed in two pages. The reasons for withholding the pedigree were apparent when it was put in the Museum. The reading of the words in the first row at once produced the impression that its importance had been vastly overrated; that its information was of little value; that it was almost worthless as evidence of the priority of Dutch typography. Dr. Van der Linde, who made a critical examination of the writing soon after it was placed in the Museum, revealed the astonishing fact that the most important entry had been falsified. This entry, which contains the only portion of any interest in an inquiry concerning the invention of printing by Coster, consists of the following lines: “Sijn tweede wijff was Lourens “His [Thomas Pieterzoon’s] second Janssoens Costers dochter die wife was Lourens Janssoen’s deerste print in die werlt Coster’s daughter who brought brocht Anno 1446.” the first print in the world in the year 1446.”