43 



10. The history of the esparto and jute trade, 

 of ver t y racir r mS and indeed the history of every great 

 Sid. b< ury trade which has succeeded in establishing 

 itself, affords ample confirmation of the truth of 

 what I have said. All experience goes to shew 

 that for a new article of commerce even to find a 

 sale not to speak of its realizing its true value it 

 must have been first tried and approved. 



11. Although paper made from esparto was 

 The history of shewn at the Exhibition of 1851, this 



esparto au illus- 



fibre remained unappreciated for several 

 years, although at that time paper-making materials 

 were sufficiently scarce to excite public anxiety, and 

 to attract the attention of the Lords Commissioners 

 of Her Majesty's Treasury, who deputed Dr. Royle 

 in 1854 to consider the matter, and, if possible, to sug- 

 gest some new substance that would be likely to prove 

 suitable. I am also informed by Mr. Thomas Routledge 

 that, although his first patent was dated 1856, and 

 he was daily making printing paper of fair quality 

 and selling it in the market, yet it was only in 1861, 

 when the American "War threatened a cotton famine, 

 that this sedge gained notoriety, and then, he says, 

 he could not import a sufficient quantity. In his in- 

 teresting pamphlet on "Bamboo as a Paper Material," 

 he writes : " The importations of esparto, which did 

 not amount to 1000 tons in the year 1860 (indeed 

 up to that date I was the only manufacturer using it), 

 rose to upwards of 50,000 tons in the year 1865 ; 

 and by 1871 ten years only from its introduction 

 the annual imports have attained the large total of 



