There are twenty-five volumes, one for each letter of the alphabet. There are twenty-six letters in the alphabet, you say. Ah, you continue, I have caught you in a foible. The compendium is not complete. Volume X is missing, and has been missing for some years.
Wisdom concerning things that begin with X is in short supply of late.
The remaining volumes, however, are more than sufficient to document the things that do not begin with X. Sifting through the print, tiny like jewel-sprinkled sands, one may find accounts of chickens born with seven heads or the heads of bulls, babies born speaking Flemish, corpses climbing from the tombs or mice that bark like spaniels. Here they divulge the story of the Doric pillars that support the world and of who erected them in their alabaster glory. Here is a footnote on what the tormented shades in Hell carry on their backs, and another advising on which horn of the moon the intrepid explorer ought to hang his rope on his journey to the heavens. Not a wealth of knowledge, but a surfeit here. We could, with pomp and fanfare start our story with a king, or a giant fish, or the capture of Konstantinople by the armies of the Grand Kazoo.