464 Paper at the International Exhibition. [October, 
denied that paper forms a most important industry, espe- 
cially in this country, and is capable of being applied to a 
number of purposes with great advantage, where other and 
more expensive materials are now principally used. In the 
present article we shall not, therefore, strictly confine our- 
selves to a notice of what is presented to the public eye at 
this year’s International Exhibition, but we propose to 
extend our review so far as to notice other uses of paper 
which are not shown there, and, as a fitting introduction to 
our subject, a brief history of paper manufacture may well 
precede our further remarks on the subject. 
Without going back so far as to the earliest periods, 
when the only means of recording events were by engraving 
in clay, stone, and metals, which were used by the ancients 
for all matters of public notoriety; and passing by the 
subsequent use of thin slices of wood, and skins of animals 
for similar purposes, we shall come at once to consider the 
use of those materials whence we may trace the origin of 
paper manufacture from vegetable substances. Thus, then, 
it would appear that the use of boards was in some measure 
superseded by that of the bark and leaves of certain trees, 
and it is from the latter that the first paper was manu- 
factured. The plant whose leaves were mostly used for 
writing on was the Papyrus, a kind of large rush, which 
grew upon the banks of the Nile. At a very early period 
the Egyptians appear to have manufactured a species of 
paper from its leaves, or, as some suppose, from the stock 
of the plant. It is uncertain when the use of the Papyrus 
leaf was superseded by paper made from it; but Egypt 
enjoys the honour of having invented the process, and 
Isidore even fixes the locality of its first manufacture at 
Memphis. Varo, the Roman, ascribes the date to the time 
of Alexander the Great, after the founding of Alexandria; 
but Pliny quotes a passage from the writings of Cassius 
Hemina, an ancient annalist, in which he speaks of some 
books found in the tomb of Numa, when it was opened 535 
years after his decease, and asserts that these books were 
of paper, and had been interred with him. As Numa pre- 
ceded Alexander by 300 years, this circumstance, if ad- 
mitted, would carry back the date of the invention anterior 
to that time. Dr. Gill, in his Commentary, says, ‘‘ On the 
banks of the Nile grew a reed, or rush, called by the Greeks 
papyrus, or byblus, from whence come the words paper and 
bible, or book, of which paper was anciently made, even as 
early as the time of Isaiah.” This, then, if correct, would 
take the manufacture back to a still earlier date. 
