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margins. The wax, which is not thick upon either, is thinner upon the 

 beechen tabulte, upon which the stylus lias in places penetrated into the 

 wood. On these the letters are few and indistinct, though some Greek 

 letters are perceptible. On the firwood tabulae the writing, which is in 

 Latin, is sufficiently legible, and turns out to be a document relating to 

 a Collegium or incorporated body. It is written from right to left, and 

 commences on the fourth page, and the decyphering of it is much 

 facilitated by the singular fact that it is written twice over. 



A full account of this remarkable discovery has been lately published 

 at Leipzig, by Professor Massmann, of Munich, who gives engravings of 

 both tablets. These tabulae ceratae continued to be used until the time 

 when paper made of cotton or linen became common, i. e. the thirteenth 

 or fourteenth century. Considerably before this period, the art of 

 making paper from cotton was introduced from Asia into Europe. 



The following incident led the great antiquary Montfaucon to 

 investigate how long cotton paper had been in use. The Monks of 

 St. Basilius, in Sicily, were in danger of being deprived of a piece of 

 land, which they held by virtue of a deed written upon cotton paper, 

 and purporting in its date to be six hundred years old. The opposing 

 parties asserted that this deed was clearly forged, since cotton paper, as 

 they alleged, had not been in use so long as six hundred years. Mont- 

 faucon, who happened at the period of this dispute to be at Rome, was 

 applied to for his opinion upon the subject, and he established the 

 genuineness of the deed in the following manner. He quoted from a 

 Sicilian historian a charter of King Roger, confirming certain previous 

 charters and privileges granted by himself and his father to a Sicilian 

 monastery, and saying that he had renewed upon parchment two charters 

 which had been written upon cotton paper, the one in the year 111*2 

 and the other in the year 110*2. Montfaucon further proves, from 

 various historical notices and examples of antient MSS., that this kind 

 of paper was in general use in the eleventh and even in the tenth 

 century. He observes, however, that the manuscripts of the tenth, 

 eleventh, and twelfth centuries, are more commonly upon parchment 

 than upon cotton paper, whereas those of the three following centuries — 

 thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth — are more frequently on cotton 

 paper than on parchment.* This paper was soon found to be wanting 

 in tenacity and durability, so much so that the Emperor Frederick II., 

 in the year 1*221, issued a decree enacting that all pubUc instruments 

 on cotton paper should thenceforth be null and void, and allowing the 

 term of two years within which antient deeds must be transcribed on 

 parchment. The cheap papers of our own time, into the texture of 



• * Paleographia Grajca, p. 17 — 19. 



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