PAPER. 



but, when cultivated in our greenhouses, the fruit is 

 entirely worthless. This plant is remarkable for the 

 rapidity of its growth, rising to the height of six feet 

 in about six months ; it flowers and bears fruit 

 throughout the year. Four other species of carica 

 inhabit the intertropical parts of America, and, ac- 

 cording to Bartram, one is found in East Florida, 

 but it nas not been seen there by later travellers. 



PAPER, HISTORY OF. The most ancient kind 

 of paper, the Egyptian, was made of the cyperus pa- 

 pyrus. (See Papyrus.) According to the informa- 

 tion handed down to us, the skins or fibres were sepa- 

 rated in thin layers from the blade of the grass, and 

 spread upon a table moistened with water from the 

 Nile. The same adhesive water was heated, and 

 the layers were wet with it. Upon the first layer 

 another was placed, pressed and dried in the sun, and 

 smoothed with a tooth. The age of this all-impor- 

 tant invention is uncertain. In later times, the Ro- 

 mans devoted great industry to the preparation of 

 paper ; t-hey had their glutinatores (those who glued 

 the paper), malleatores (hammerers), &c. According 

 to Pliny, the sheets of the Romans were generally 

 thirteen inches wide. There are, however, distinguish- 

 ed antiquarians, and among them the famous cheva- 

 lier Landoliiia (died 1810, in Sicily), who maintain 

 that it was the pith of the plant which the ancients 

 chiefly used for the purpose of making paper ; and 

 he supports his opinion by ingenious experiments 

 made witli a plant growing near Syracuse, and which 

 corresponds to the description given by the ancients 

 of the papyrus. The Egyptian paper was called 

 /3//3A.0?, papyrus, charta &gyp(iaca or Niliaca. The 

 greatest quantity of paper was made in Alexandria, 

 which greatly increased its wealth by its com- 

 merce in this article. In the fifth century, this pa- 

 per was rendered very dear by heavy taxes. In the 

 eighth century, it began to be supplanted by cotton 

 paper ; yet it was used in Italy until the eleventh 

 century. The natives of Mexico, before the Spanish 

 conquest, prepared their paper from the leaves of the 

 agave (q. v.), in a manner resembling the ancient 

 mode of preparing papyrus. They removed all the 

 fleshy substance from the leaves, by putting the plant 

 in water, laid the remaining fibrous textures one on 

 the other, and besmeared them with a clayey sub- 

 stance, which gave to the whole much firmness and 

 elasticity. Besides the papyrus, there are remnants 

 of ancient paper made of the inner bark of trees, 

 which, however, does not seem so general, on account 

 of its brittleness. The papyrus seems to be better 

 fitted for resisting the tooth of time than any other 

 writing material. To give a single instance : Mr 

 Saillier, at Marseilles, who possesses a number of 

 Egyptian papyrus manuscripts, has two rolls, which 

 Champollion the younger, when embarking for 

 Egypt in 1829, discovered to contain the history of 

 the wars and reign of Sesostris the Great ; their date 

 is that of the ninth year of his reign. But Sesostris- 

 Rhamses, or the Great, according to the calculations 

 of German chronologists, lived in the time of Moses ; 

 being, it is supposed, the son of the Pharaoh who 

 perished in the Red sea. Whatever may be thought 

 of the date assigned to these manuscripts, it is cer- 

 tain that their age is very great. In the eleventh 

 and twelfth centuries, much was written on mem- 

 branes. The Arabians became acquainted, in 704, 

 A. D., with the cotton paper in Bucharia, prepared 

 it themselves of raw cotton, and transplanted the art 

 to Spain in the eleventh century. In that country, 

 where water-mills were in use, the first paper-mills 

 also were set up, and at a later period carried over 

 (about the year 1300) to Italy, France, and Germany. 

 In these mills the manufacture of paper from cotton 

 rags was commenced. This cotton paper was known 



under the name of charta serica, cottonea, gossypina, 

 xylina, damascena, also Parcamena Greecu. It dif- 

 fers from the linen paper by its less compact texture, 

 and by more easily breaking and blotting. Most 

 of the American printing paper is made of cotton, on 

 account of the great use of cotton fabrics compared 

 with linen in that country ; and for this reason it is 

 mostly soft and liable to be torn. But, to judge from 

 the appearance of some remnants of Spanish paper 

 of the twelfth century, attempts were made as early 

 as that time to add linen rags to the cotton ones, 

 which probably led, at a later period, to the inven- 

 tion of linen paper. Proper linen paper hardly 

 makes its appearance before 1318 ; but from that 

 year the archives of the hospital in Kaufbeurn, in 

 Germany, contain documents upon linen paper; and 

 in the city archives of the same place are documents 

 of 1324, 1326, ]331, upon the same kind of paper: 

 hence it is probable that the first linen paper was made 

 in Germany. Spain and Italy have no linen paper 

 before the year 1367, in their archives or libraries. 

 This paper was not derived from China, as the 

 Chinese to this day manufacture their paper of raw 

 hemp and the rind of bamboos and mulberry-trees. 

 Linen paper is esteemed the best, on account of its 

 firmness and durability. The English at present 

 make the finest paper ; they have brought it to great 

 perfection in respect of whiteness, firmness, and fine- 

 ness, though the old paper, with a yellow tinge, was 

 probably better for the eyes than the dazaling white 

 paper used at present. The French also manufac- 

 ture very fine paper. The Italians and Germans 

 make the cheapest paper, as durable as that of the 

 nations already mentioned, but not so fine. The 

 manufacture of paper has of late rapidly increased in 

 the United States of America. According to an 

 estimate in 1829, the whole quantity made in this 

 country amounted to about five to seven millions a 

 year, and employed from ten to eleven thousand per- 

 sons. Rags are not imported from Italy and Ger- 

 many to the same amount as formerly, because peo- 

 ple here save them more carefully ; and the value of 

 the rags, junk, &c., saved annually in the United 

 States, is believed to amount to two millions of dol- 

 lars. Machines for making paper of any length are 

 much employed in the United States. The quality of 

 American paper has also improved ; but, as paper be- 

 comes much better by keeping, it is difficult to have it 

 of the best quality in this country, the interest of 

 capital being too high. The paper used there for 

 printing compares very disadvantageonsly with that 

 of Britain. Much wrapping paper is now made of 

 straw, and paper for tracing through is prepared in 

 Germany from the poplar tree. A letter of Mr 

 Brand, formerly a civil officer in Upper Provence, in 

 France (which contains many pine forests), dated 

 February 12, 1830, has been published in the French 

 papers, containing an account of his successful ex- 

 periments to make coarse paper of the pine tree. 

 The experiments of others have led to the same re- 

 sults. Any of our readers, interested in this subject, 

 can find Mr Brand's letter in the Courrier Fran^ais 

 of November 27, 1830, a French paper published in 

 New York. In salt-works near Hull, Massachusetts, 

 in which the sea-water is made to flow slowly over 

 sheds of pine, in order to evaporate, the writer found 

 large quantities of a white substance the fibres of 

 the pine wood dissolved and carried off by the brine 

 which seemed to require nothing but glue to con- 

 vert it into paper. 



Paper-Making. The combination of flexible 

 fibres by which paper is produced, depends on the 

 minute subdivision of the fibres, and their subsequent 

 cohesion. Linen and cotton rags are the common 

 material of which paper is made ; but hemp and some 



