(Image from the Library of Congress Digital Collections)
I’m researching a bit about horn books, because I have to make some enclosures for a few in our collection. During my research I came across this delightful quote (from “HISTORY OF THE HORN-BOOK”, The Spectator, 1 Aug 1896)
“Mr. Tuer says that the "preservation of more than one horn- book is due to the unpremeditated foresight of little boys,” who carefully dropped that instrument of early torture through cracks in the floor or wainscoting, where it lay concealed till the cottage or farmhouse was pulled down. The earliest horn-book left to us, probably belonging to the middle of the sixteenth century, was found behind the panelling of a farmhouse in Surrey. In 1828 the “Middleton (or Bateman) Horn-book” was discovered in the thatch of an old farm- house. And as it was hardly the sort of object a jackdaw could conceal, it is possible that the instincts of some small former inhabitant of the farmhouse discovered that thatch was a splendid hiding-place, and one likely to be unsuspected. “
Basically, several horn books were preserved and survived to this day because some naughty children didn’t want to do their studying and tried to hide the horn books under the floor or in the wall. I did the same thing with some pieces of banana that I didn’t want to eat, when I was a little kid.