LESSON XVIII. pa pý'rus, a reed from the pith of which the Egyptians made paper. mo nŏpo ly, sole right in a thing of sale or profit. trans vĕrsely, cross-wise. PAPER. Egypt, China, and Japan are the countries in which the earliest manufacture of paper is known to have been carried on. The Egyptian paper was made of the plant called papyrus, a kind of grass. According to the information handed down to us, the delicate inner skins were separated from the blade of the grass, and spread upon a table in such a manner that the strips overlapped one another. The table was sprinkled with water from the Nile, which, no doubt, had the effect of moistening the natural gum of the plant so as to make the strips adhere. When this first layer of papyrus skin was complete, succeeding layers were laid upon it transversely, until the paper was sufficiently thick. These layers were then pressed together, and the sheet of paper was dried in the sun. The best quality was reserved for religious uses, and not allowed to be exported. The Romans, however, discovered a process of cleansing this kind of paper from the marks of writing; and, after this discovery, they imported from Egypt sacred books 'written on this material, which they used for their own purposes after the original writing had been removed. Besides the papyrus, there are remnants of ancient paper of the inner bark of trees. Egyptian paper was in general use in Europe until the eighth or ninth century of our era. It then began slowly to give place to paper manufactured from cotton and other materials, the art of making which, was apparently learned by the Arabs in Asia, and introduced by them into Europe. This manufacture had probably spread to Western Asia from China, where it is known to have existed at a very remote period. Paper was made by the Chinese from some materials at least as early as the beginning of the Christian era; and, according to their own account, the fabrication of paper from cotton appears to have been invented about 200 A.D. The earliest paper manufactory that is known to have been set up in England is that of John Tate, which was established at Stevenage, in Hertfordshire, in the reign of Henry VII., about 1495. The next celebrated paper manufactory in England is that established by Spilman, a German, at Dartford, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, from whom he received a monopoly of the manufacture, and of the right of buying linen rags for the purpose. Even after the introduction of the manufacture into England, it long remained in a backward state, so that until late in the eighteenth century the finer qualities of paper were imported from France and Holland. The materials that have been used for the manufacture of paper are very numerous. In China, where much of the paper made is of very excellent quality, different materials are used in different provinces. Hemp and linen rags are used in one part of the country; the inner bark of the mulberry in another; and, in other parts, the bark of the elm, straw, bamboo, etc. The Japanese make use, principally, of the bark of a kind of mulberry, and the paper manufactured by them is unequaled for strength and softness; which enables it to be used for many purposes for which leather is commonly employed elsewhere, such as the making of ladies' reticules. The natives of Mexico, before the Spanish conquest, made their paper from the leaves of the agave or American aloe, in a manner resembling the ancient mode of preparing papyrus. After the introduction into Europe of cotton and linen rags as materials for paper-making, other vegetable fibers were for many centuries entirely, or almost entirely, given up; not so much, however, on account of their unfitness, as because rags, besides being admirably adapted for the purpose, were cheaper than any other material. It was only about the close of the eighteenth century that paper-manufacturers again began to turn their attention to the possibility of using vegetable fibers as substitutes for rags. In 1772, a German published a work containing sixty specimens of paper made from different vegetable materials. From this time, serious attempts were made to find out a process, by which some of these vegetable materials could be used with success to replace rags. The difficulty did not consist in the mere conversion into paper of the materials on which experiments were made—for any vegetable fiber with a rough edge can be made into paper-but in making paper out of them of such quality, and at such a price as would enable the manufactured product to compete with that made from rags. Straw, wood, and esparto grass are the chief vegetable fibers, besides rags, that have hitherto been found |