Numerous authors have written largely both with respect to parchment and paper; but, I will endeavor to comprise, in a few pages, the substance of what they have published in many volumes.

It is the opinion of many of those authors, that the art of making paper from silk and cotton, came, like many of our arts, from the Chinese. The use of it in Europe cannot be traced higher than to the eleventh century. In England, the oldest testimony, of paper, made from linen, does not ascend higher than to the year 1320.

Of paper, there have been four principal kinds; Chinese, Japanese, Egyptian, and European, which were invented in different periods of time.

As to the epocha when the Chinese paper was invented, we are left in darkness; nearly all we know of the matter is, that the Chinese have had the use of paper from time immemorial. They still excel all other nations in the manufacture of it, so far as relates to fineness, and delicacy of texture. Silk is supposed to be an ingredient in the manufacture of the best Chinese paper.* Common paper is manufactured in that country, from the young bamboo, the inner bark of the mulberry, and other trees, and from the skin which is found in the web of the silk worm.

Paper is made, in Japan, from the bark of trees, the growth of that country. Kempfer describes four, but the best paper is made of the bark of the young shoots of the true paper tree, called in the Japanese language kaadsi; this bark is properly

*The Chinese have a book called Yexim, said to have been written by their first king Fohi, about 3000 years before Christ.

*

cleansed, and boiled in clear lye, till the matter acquires a proper consistency; it is then washed and turned till it is sufficiently diluted, and reduced to soft and tender fibres; after this, it is laid on a smooth table, and beaten with a kind of batoon of hard wood, till it resembles paper steeped in water; the bark thus prepared is put into a narrow tub, and a glutinous extract from rice and the root oreni, is added. These are stirred together till they form a liquor of an equal and uniform consistency; then poured into large tubs, and the workmen proceed to form the sheets. The Japanese paper, according to Kempfer, is of great strength; and, it is said, the materials which compose it might be manufactured into ropes; one kind of it is fit for bed hangings and wearing apparel, resembling so much stuffs of wool and silk that it is often mistaken for them. When paper was first made in Japan cannot be known; it is believed they received the art from China.

In Egypt, the western parts of Asia, and the civilized parts of Europe, it is probable, paper was not known till long after it was discovered and used in China. The ancients wrote on stones, bricks, the leaves of trees, and flowers, the rind or bark of trees, tables of wood covered over with wax,* and on ivory, plates of lead, linen rolls, spade or blade bones. Pliny says, the most ancient way of writing was on the folium, or leaves of the palm tree. Then they used the inner bark of a tree; and hence, biblos in Greek, and liber in Latin, came to signify a book. When they wrote on harder substances, they used

* This method is mentioned by Homer.

iron styles, and from this circumstance, it is said, came the phrase of different styles in writing.

According to Varro, paper was not made from the Egyptian papyrus, till about the time that Alexander the great built Alexandria. From the term papyrus, is derived our word paper. The papyrus was a large rush, or reed, which grew in Egypt to the height of several feet, and of a considerable bigness. The Egyptians made sails, rigging, ropes, mats, blankets, clothes; also, small ships of the stalks of the papyrus, and paper.

From Pliny, Guilandinus and Salmasius, we learn that the Egyptians made their paper in the following manner. They began with lopping off the two extremities of the papyrus, namely, the head and root, as of no use to the manufacturer; the remaining stem they slit lengthwise, into two equal parts, and from each of these they stripped the thin scaly pellicles, of which it consisted, with the point of a needle, or knife. The innermost of those pellicles were looked upon as the best, and those nearest the rind, the worst. They were, accordingly, kept apart, and constituted different sorts of paper. As the pellicles were taken off they extended them on a table; then two, or more of them, were laid over each other transversely, so as that the fibres made right angles. In this state they were glued together by the muddy water of the Nile, and put

It grew in marshes near the Nile, was of a triangulár shape, about fourteen feet high, and eighteen or twenty-inches in circumference.

† Pliny, lib. xiii. c. 2.

under a press to produce adhesion. When the water and pressure proved ineffectual, a paste made of the finest wheat flour, mixed with hot water, and a sprinkling of vinegar, was used; the sheets were again pressed, and afterwards dried by the sun; they were then flattened and smoothed by beating them with a mallet, when they became paper; which they sometimes polished by rubbing it with a smooth hemisphere of stone, glass, &c.

Paper was an important branch of commerce to the Egyptians, which continued to increase towards the end of the Roman republic. In a letter of the emperor Adrian, the preparing of the papyrus is mentioned as one of the principal occupations in Alexandria. "In this rich and opulent city," says he, "nobody is seen idle; some are employed in the manufacturing of cloth, some in that of paper," &c. "The demand for this paper was so great toward the end of the third century, that when the tyrant Firmus conquered Egypt, he boasted that he had seized as much paper and size as would support his whole army."*

By a publication of M. Meerman, at the Hague, in 1767, it appears that paper made from linen rags had been used in Europe before the year 1300.

The abbé Andrez published, at Parma, in 1782, a work wherein he maintains, that paper made from silk was very anciently fabricated in China, and the eastern parts of Asia; that the art of making this paper was carried from China to Persia about the year 652, and to Mecca in 706. The Arabs sub

Encyc. Vol. 12. p. 705.

stituted cotton, and carried the art of making paper into Africa and Spain; from Spain it passed into France, from thence to Germany and England, &c.

The European paper made from bark, was only the inner, whitish rind inclosed between the bark and the wood of various trees, particularly the maple, plane, beech, elm, the tilia, philyra or lindentree, the last of which was chiefly used for the purpose. On this, stripped off, flatted and dried, the ancients wrote books, several of which are said to be still extant.

The Boußu, or Charta Bombycina, mentioned by Greek writers, formerly was used to signify silk, though afterward the term was applied to cotton paper, which has been in use for several centuries past. Cotton paper appears to have been very common eight or nine hundred years ago, consequently it must have been invented long before. Anterior to the destruction of the late French king's library, at Paris, there were manuscripts in it on cotton paper, which appeared to be of the eleventh century. The learned antiquarian, father Montfaucon, saw one there, proved to be written in 1050. The same author mentions that cotton paper was commonly used in the eastern empire, and even in Sicily, in the twelfth century.

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When, or by whom, linen paper was invented, is not known; as Polydore Virgil confesses, it may be of great antiquity. If the Decalogue was written on tables of stone, the laws of Solon on rollers of wood, those of the Roman Decemvirs on brass, and the ordinances of the Areopagus, and the various treaties of the Greeks, were engraved on columns ;