In 1853 there appeared at Leipzig the third volume of Rudolf Merkel's first Teubner edition of the works of Ovid, containing his text of the _Ex Ponto_. The part of Merkel's introduction dealing with the _Ex Ponto_ is entirely concerned with describing the appearance, orthography, and readings of the ninth-century _Hamburgensis scrin. 52 F_. The manuscript ends, however, at III ii 67, and Merkel says nothing of the basis for his text of the later poems, which in general is the Heinsius-Burman vulgate. In 1868 B. G. Teubner published at Leipzig Otto Korn's separate edition of the _Ex Ponto_. Korn's apparatus is the first to have a modern appearance; but this appearance is deceptive, for of the twenty sigla Korn uses, ten are for individual or several manuscripts collated by Heinsius, and only five are for manuscripts collated by Korn himself. The edition is important, since Korn was the first editor to make substantial use of _B_ in constituting his text. Usually he printed the text of _B_ in preference to the vulgate: 'Ceterum eas partes in quibus _A_ caremus, [Greek: b] [=_B_] libri uestigia secutus restitui, prorsus neglectis recentiorum exemplarium elegantiis, quorum ad normam N. Heinsius, cuius in tertio quartoque libro R. Merkelius assecla est, textum conformauit' (xv). There was some reason to review critically the vulgate established by Heinsius and Burman. Even Heinsius was capable of error; examples of this in _Ex Ponto_ IV include his preference for the inelegant _idem_ for _ille_ at iii 17, for the impossible _ullo_ instead of the better attested _nullo_ at v 15, and for the obvious interpolation _domitam ... ab Hercule_ at xvi 19 instead of _domito ... ab Hectore_. His most pervasive fault is a partiality for elegant but unnecessary emendation: often he is guilty of rewriting passages which are in themselves perfectly sound. A typical instance is vii 30: Heinsius' _globos_ is elegant enough, but there is no reason to suspect the transmitted _uiros_. Some of the readings proposed or preferred by Heinsius had been unnecessary or wrong, but many had been necessary to make sense of the text; and Korn is often guilty of damaging the text by excluding readings not found in _B_. The supreme example of this is his restoration of the manuscripts' reading _iactate_ for _laxate_ at ix 73. Korn used the collation of _B_ by Harles, which had errors and omissions (in his preface Harles had warned that his report might contain errors[13]), so that at i 9 Korn prints _in istis_ and at x 83 _perstas_, without noting in his apparatus that _B_'s false readings were _ab istis_ and _praestas_ respectively. He was aware that at xi 21 _B_ read _mihi_, but printed _tibi_ nonetheless, although Burman had already explained why _mihi_ was the correct reading.