PAPYRUS OF EGYPT 



Lower Egypt is the gift of the Nile, but it is not so 

 much the Nile as these neglected water plants which made 

 the rich lucerne, cotton, and food crops of Lower Egypt 

 possible. Amongst the Egyptian Reeds one especially is of 

 great importance. The Papyrus antiquorum^ ten feet high, 

 has much the same habit as our Phragmites and other water 

 plants. It forms dense, almost impassable thickets, some- 

 times completely occupying and choking a small valley, or 

 leaving only a passage, often changing and half choked, 

 through a larger one. This, with other plants, makes the 

 " sudd " of the Nile, which is one enormous accumulation of 

 marsh plants and reeds floating on the water and covering a 

 length of over 500 miles. 



It was from the Papyrus that the ancient Egyptians made 

 their paper. The stems are six to seven inches in diameter. 

 "The pith of the larger flowering stems . . . cut into 

 thin strips, united together by narrowly over-lapping mar- 

 gins, and then crossed under pressure by a similar arrange- 

 ment of strips at right angles, constitutes the Papyrus of 

 antiquity." 



These great marshes and reed-beds are full of interest to 

 naturalists. The Fens of Lincolnshire and the Norfolk 

 Broads show the way in which water plants keep hold of the 

 worn and travelled rubbish of the hills, and prevent most of 

 it from becoming useless, barren sea-sands. These places, 

 however, like the sudd of the Nile, and the Roman " Cam- 

 pagna," have an evil reputation so far as climate is concerned. 

 This used to be the case even in lower Chelsea, in London 

 (where snipe were shot not so very long ago). It is as if 

 Nature had desired to do her own work in peace and without 

 being disturbed, for fever, ague, mosquitoes, and malaria are 

 very common. Yet a certain number of people always live in 



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