As in all our oldest Latin manuscripts, the ornamentation is of the simplest kind. Such as it is, it is mostly found at the end and beginning of books. In our case, the colophon is enclosed between two scrolls of vine-tendrils terminating in an ivy-leaf at both ends. The lettering in the colophon and in the running title is set off by means of ticking above and below the line.
Red is used for decorative purposes in the middle line of the colophon, in the scroll of vine-tendrils, in the ticking, and in the border at the end of the Index on fol. 49. Red was also used, to judge by our fragment, in the first three lines of a new book,[8] in the addresses in the Index, and in the addresses preceding each letter.
[Footnote 8: This is also the case in the Paris manuscript of Livy of the fifth century, in the Codex Bezae of the Gospels (published in facsimile by the University of Cambridge in 1899), in the Pliny palimpsest of St. Paul in Carinthia, and in many other manuscripts of the oldest type.]
The original scribe made a number of corrections. The omitted line of the Index on fol. 49 was added between the lines, probably by the scribe himself, using a finer pen; likewise the omitted line on fol. 52v, lines 7-8. A number of slight corrections come either from the scribe or from a contemporary reader; the others are by a somewhat later hand, which is probably not more recent than the seventh century.[9] The method of correcting varies. As a rule, the correct letter is added above the line over the wrong letter; occasionally it is written over an erasure. An omitted letter is also added above the line over the space where it should be inserted. Deletion of single letters is indicated by a dot placed over the letter and a horizontal or an oblique line drawn through it. This double use of expunction and cancellation is not uncommon in our oldest manuscripts. For details on the subject of corrections, see the notes on pp. 23-34.
[Footnote 9: The strokes over the two consecutive _i_'s on fol. 53v, l. 23, were made by a hand that can hardly be older than the thirteenth century.]
There is a ninth-century addition on fol. 53 and one of the fifteenth century on fol. 51. On fol. 49, in the upper margin, a fifteenth-century hand using a stilus or hard point scribbled a few words, now difficult to decipher.[10] Presumably the same hand drew a bearded head with a halo. Another relatively recent hand, using lead, wrote in the left margin of fol. 53v the monogram QR[11] and the roman numerals i, ii, iii under one another. These numerals, as Professor Rand correctly saw, refer to the works of Pliny the Elder enumerated in the text. Further activity by this hand, the date of which it is impossible to determine, may be seen, for example, on fol. 49v, ll. 8, 10, 15; fol. 52, ll. 4, 10, 13, 21, 22; fol. 53, ll. 12, 15, 16, 17, 20, 27; fol. 53v, ll. 5, 10, 15.