About the binding(s?) and missing folios

[Jorge_Stolfi]

The presence of quire numbers on one out of every four sheets with herbal illustrations clearly means that these were meant at that time to be nested in stacks of four. Even with alternating A and B sheets.

Could these quire numbers have been written just prior to the binding, to instruct the first Binder about the desired order of the quires in the book?  Or even by the Binder himself?

If the bifolios had been kept unbound by the Author, with no folio numbers, why would he number the quires?  he would not need them to keep the sections in whatever order he wanted, and on the other hand he did not seem to care about the order of the Herbal folios.

IIUC, the McCrone X-ray fluorescence instrument detected iron on both the text ink and the folio numbers, but no iron on the quire numbers.  This suggests that (1) they were not written by the original Scribe and (2) are probably on lampblack ink or other ink that does not bind to the vellum. The (2) in turn makes sense if whoever wrote them did not care about their long-term permanence.

All the best, --stolfi