with which I have associated the Bellovacensis; there can hardly be doubt, at any rate, that De Vries is correct in assigning it to France, where Voss obtained so many of his manuscripts.[29] Except, therefore, for M and the Munich fragment, there is no evidence furnished by the chief manuscripts which connects the tradition of the Letters with Germany.  The insular clue afforded by the latter book deserves further attention, but I can not follow it here.  The question of the Parisinus aside, B and F of Class I and V of Class II are sure signs that the propagation of the text started from one or more centres—­Fleury and Corbie seem the most probable—­in France.

[Footnote 24:  Cod.  Med.  LXVIII, 1.  See Rostagno in the preface to his edition of this manuscript in the Leyden series, and for the Pliny, Chatelain, Pal. des Class.  Lat., pl.  CXLV.  Keil (edition, p. vi), followed by Kukula (edition, p. iv), incorrectly assigns the manuscript to the tenth century.  The latest treatment is by Paul Lehmann in his “Corveyer Studien,” in Abhandl. der Bayer.  Akad. der Wiss.  Philos.-philol. u. hist.  Klasse, XXX, 5 (1919), p. 38.  He assigns it to the middle or the last half of the ninth century.]

[Footnote 25:  Chatelain calls the page of Pliny that he reproduces (pl.  CXLIV) tenth century, but attributes the Sallust portion of the manuscript, although this seems of a piece with the style of the Pliny, to the ninth; see pl.  LIV.  Hauler, who has given the most complete account of the manuscript, thinks it “saec. IX/X” (Wiener Studien XVII (1895), p. 124).  He shows, as others had done before him, the close association of the book with Bernensis 357, and of that codex with Fleury.]

[Footnote 26:  See Merrill C.P. X, p. 23.  The catalogue (G.  Becker, Catalogi bibliothecarum antiqui, p. 282) was prepared about 1200, and is of Corbie, not as Merrill has it, Corvey.  Chatelain (on plate LIV) regards the book as “provenant du monastere de Corbie.”  At my request, Mr. H.J.  Leon, Sheldon Fellow of Harvard University, recently examined the manuscript, and neither he nor Monsignore Mercati, the Prefect of the Vatican Library, could discover any note or library-mark to indicate that the book is a Corbeiensis.  In a recent article, Philol.  Quart. I (1922), pp. 17 ff.), Professor Ullman is inclined, after a careful analysis of the evidence, to assign the manuscript to Corbie, but allows for the possibility that it was written in Tours or the neighborhood and thence sent to Corbie.]

  [Footnote 27:  C.P. X, p. 23.]