DE MONSTRIS. 246 



to have been a matter of accident rather than of inten- 

 tion, and the printers have thought fit to employ every 

 form of abbreviation that has been invented for the 

 bewilderment of readers. Mostly they have had the 

 grace to add the abbreviatory line, so indicating that a 

 vowel or two, or the letters ' m ' and ' n,' are omitted, 

 and may be supplied at discretion ; so that the reader 

 can see without much diflBculty that ' aia ' means anima. 

 In many cases, however, they have even dispensed with 

 this slight aid to the reader, and left him to conjectm-e 

 that ' sex mans hntes ' stands for sex manus habentes, 

 and that, throughout the book, ^hoies' signifies ho- 

 mines. 



The eye, however, soon becomes accustomed to these 

 little abbreviations (which are wonderfully like the 

 dress of that period — cut very short just where one 

 might expect length), and can employ itself with 

 the chief glory of the book, namely, its illustrations. 

 These are reaUy wonderful productions of ancient art. 

 Wood engraving was then in its earliest infancy, and 

 the engraver could only produce hard, bold lines, of 

 nearly uniform thickness. Of perspective there was 

 little — of aerial perspective, none ; while the art of 

 ' cross-hatching,' so easy on metal and so difficult on 

 wood, had only just been discovered. Yet, notwith- 

 standing all these difficulties, the illustrations possess, 

 like the letterpress, a wonderful amount of quaint, 

 stiff, homely power. The designs are attributed to 

 Wolgemuth ; but whoever may have been the artist. 



