32 TRIANDUIA. 



part of a chapter of Pliny upon this subject, rather 

 than be indebted to more modern compilations. This 

 author, after speaking upon gums, in his thirteenth 

 book, says— " We have not yet touched upon marsh 

 plants or on shrubs of the rivers 5 yet before we de- 

 part from Egypt, the nature of the Papyrus is also 

 to be related, since, in the use of paper consists civili- 

 zation and the retrospect of past events. Varro re- 

 lates, that the invention of making paper from the 

 Papyrus was found out during the conquest of Alex- 

 ander the Great, when he founded Alexandria : before 

 which time the use of paper did not exists 



" The leaves of Palm trees were first used to 

 write upon ; then the inner bark, by Botanists called 

 the liber, of certain trees 5 afterwards the public re- 

 cords were written on rolls of lead j soon after that 

 private persons began to make use of linen cloth or 

 waxed tablets for the same purpose, for we find in 

 Homer table-books were even used to write upon be- 

 fore the time of the Trojan War. But while Homer 



S Although Pliny has here zsserted, on the authority of 

 Varro, that the use of paper made from the Papyrus did not 

 exist before the foundation of Alexandria, Antca non fuisse 

 chartarum usum : yet it would appear, from Isaiah, to have 

 been applied to that purpose before he wrote his Prophecies, 

 which is supposed to have been sevtn hundred years before 

 the Christian ^ra. Isaiah xix. 7. And w hat is more remark- 

 able, the word in Hebrew signifying the Papyrus appears to 

 have been derived from the use to which it was applied ; as if 

 its application to the making of paper were even anterior to its 

 Hebrew name. 



