BOTANICAL ASPECTS OF PAPER-PULP AND TANNING INDUSTRIES 



513 



such oddities as mummy cloth and ivory shavings. In addition to trees of 

 various kinds, it mentioned: 



Sixteen years later another survey, world-wide in coverage, raised the list 

 to nearly 500, with more vegetable and non- vegetable oddities. 



Hemp {Crotalaria and Cannabis), jute {Cor chorus), and swamp cane 

 (Arundinaria gigantea) of the South were also tried, but were either insuffi- 

 cient in available quantities or not wholly satisfactory. In 1860 rags still 

 constituted 88 per cent of all papermaking material, which means that other 

 fibers were contributing at least 10 per cent. 



In 1898 an English syndicate unsuccessfully attempted to make paper from 

 sugar-cane bagasse in a mill on the Mississippi some 20 miles below New 

 Orleans. Additional sources of rags or some new fibrous material had to be 

 found. 



Wood pulp. The first steps toward a solution were made in Europe — France, 

 England, and Germany in succession. In France in 1719, Rene Antoine 

 Ferchault de Reaumur, a naturalist and physicist, was intrigued by the Ameri- 

 can wasp which converts wood into the paper-like material of its nest. He 

 presented his observations to the French Royal Academy and challenged the 

 papermakers of Europe, so dependent on rags, to emulate the wasp. Thirty 

 years later he chided himself and them for not yet having done anything in 

 the matter. 



From 1762 to 1771, Dr. Jacob Christian Schaffer of Germany pursued ex- 

 periments on a great variety of materials, including various kinds of wood 

 (e.g., aspen, beech, mulberry, spruce, willow), as possible sources of paper- 

 making fibers, and published a six-pamphlet treatise on the subject. Several 



