part which interests us contains a little over 29 lines. If we divide
1691 by 29 we get 58.3. Just 58 pages of Teubner text are occupied by
the 47 leaves which preceded our fragment. So close a conformity is
sufficient to prove our point. We have possibly allowed too much space
for indices and colophons, especially if the former covered less ground
for Books I and II than for Book III. Further, owing to the abbreviation
of _que_ and _bus_, and particularly of official titles, we can not
expect a closer agreement.

It is not worth while to attempt a more elaborate calculation. With the
edges matching so nearly, it is obvious that the original manuscript as
known and used in the fifteenth century could not have contained some
other work, however brief, before Book I of Pliny’s _Letters_. If the
manuscript contained the entire ten books it consisted of about 260
leaves. This sum is obtained by counting the number of lines in the
Teubner edition of 1912, dividing this sum by 19, and adding thereto
pages for colophons and indices. It would be too bold to suppose
that this calculation necessarily gives us the original size of the
manuscript, since the manuscript may have had less than ten books, or it
may, on the other hand, have had other works. But if it contained only
the ten books of the _Letters_, then 260 folios is an approximately
correct estimate of its size.

It is hard to believe that only six leaves of the original manuscript
have escaped destruction. The fact that the outside sheet (foll. 48r and
53v) is not much worn nor badly soiled suggests that the gathering of
six leaves must have been torn from the manuscript not so very long ago
and that the remaining portions may some day be found.