ii. This suspicion becomes definite, and almost rises to a certainty, when

we look further into the contents of this sheet. Its second page (28 _v__o_) exhibits four columns of St. Mark (xv. 16-xvi. 1); its third page (29 _r__o_), the two last columns of St. Mark (xvi. 2-8) and the first two of St. Luke (i. 1-18). But the writing of these six columns of St. Mark is so spread out that they contain less matter than they ought; whereas the columns of St. Luke that follow contain the normal amount. It follows, therefore, that the change introduced by the _diorthota_ must have been an extensive excision from St. Mark:—in other words, that these pages as originally written must have contained a portion of St. Mark of considerable length which has been omitted from the pages as they now stand. If these six columns of St. Mark were written as closely as the columns of St. Luke which follow, there would be room in them for the omitted twelve verses.—More particularly, the fifth column (the first of page 29 _r__o_) is so arranged as to contain only about five-sixths of the normal quantity of matter, and the _diorthota_ is thus enabled to carry over four lines to begin a new column, the sixth, by which artifice he manages to conclude St. Mark not with a blank column such as in B tells its own story, but with a column such as in this MS. is usual at the end of a book, exhibiting the closing words followed by an “arabesque” pattern executed with the pen, and the subscription (the rest being left empty). But, by the very pains he has thus taken to conform this final column to the ordinary usage of the MS., his purpose of omission is betrayed even more conclusively, though less obviously, than by the blank column of B(628).