182 THE CHINESE SUGAR CANE. 
and texture, to a great extent, of fine parchment, and is 
naturally sized, so that it is pleasant to write upon. It 
is quite strong, and for that reason suitable for wrapping 
paper. Of it he says, excusing himself for its unfinished 
quality, ‘‘I think it better to give this product in all its 
primitive purity, rather than to color it. Its composition 
presents doubtless defects, which explain themselves 
easily when it is remembered that this paper has been 
made by a person entirely unacquainted with paper- 
making, in want of all objects necessary for this industry, 
and aided simply by my little son; it will be understood 
by the result obtained, how much can be obtained under 
proper conditions from this plant.” 
Duret gives the process for making paper from corn 
stalks, as follows: ‘‘One hundred and twenty-five pounds 
of pulp of the stalk, which is yet moist, and from which 
the saccharine matter has been separated, are put in a 
copper, with about fifteen pounds of quick lime and a 
sufficient quantity of water to form of it a sort of clear 
paste. The mixture is moistened from time to time, and 
after several days of contact the pulp is triturated in a 
cylinder mill, as is the custom with common rags. After 
having reduced into paste the residue of the stalks, as we 
have just explained, it was mixed with twelve and a half 
pounds of paste of coarse rags, and the mixture was then 
submitted to a new trituration. This one hundred and 
twenty-five pounds of the stalk mixed with twelve and a 
half pounds of coarse rags have yielded sixty-three 
pounds of wrapping paper, well sized. 
M. Hudelist thinks that, with fifty per cent. of com- 
mon paste, he eould have obtained a paper very strong 
