124 



WRITING MATERIALS. 



DS u'. ; TST-,.. English < in the proper mane Kfl-v, (Jer- 

 inriii and Italian z. German c before the 

 vowels * and i; Poli-h C lieiore :ill tin- vn\\ - 

 els ; Russian T*i. These four compounds 

 be'mtf nearly alike (as Mr I)u PflMaMjMt- 

 ly oMerret to me), the oar of the \\rii-r 

 inu-t direct him Inch to u*e, at the rospef- 

 tive consonant* predominate. 



OH Se*A below. 



(./, or <;-. iiiili-li * in eitimp'e, tract. 



'ifH. 



KII, puttuntl, like the Creek ; Spanish f, f, and j; Gor- 

 man rh; Dutch u'ft. 1 Imve (jiven tin- pi >- 

 \'i lor tin- purpose of e\pre-,'mi,' 

 tlii- guttural sound . l)ut */i, pronoun, 

 the IrUli it<i in tlirir name Droghed'i, \c., 

 ma\ In- belter ill certain case-< where this 

 guttural partakes more of the flat soun.l. f, 

 , .>! the sharp one A'. It nm> In- nli-.Tveil. 

 tli.it i-'.'i has I'een alreaily UMu in some of 

 the l.i>ok> printed for the "use of the Indians. 



KS English t in maxim, erereiu. 



KSII, xi in fmtiftlffiitn; .rn in liiniry. The formation of 



this combination would lie ol> v'mu . ; hut as the 

 soiiinl i* ai-tually often used in the Delaware 

 language, 1 have thought it best to notice it. 

 'ish gu 



tv. ->r LI as in the English word rtfftyard; French / 



nu-ni .'..'. Spani-h //; Portuguese IA; Ita- 

 lian ei oefore i. 



NY, or M, as in tlie l-.nglish proper name Banyan, anil 



the words WUM, opini'im, &C. 



TH in the Kuglish word thin; Greek*. 



See dt above 



i f.t i 



TH, Kiifflish ch in rh'tir; Spanish rh in much; 



Italian c before e and i; German tsch; Rus- 

 sian q. 



wr as iii the Delaware language 



ZH, as i in pleature; French and Portuguese j; 



Polish :, with a comma over it (z). 



WRITING MATERIALS. In the most an- 

 cient times it would seem that writing was used 

 for great occasions only ; and that a rock, a tablet 

 of stone or a plate of metal was the receptacle. 

 The reader will doubtless remember, the stone ta- 

 bles of Moses, and the wish of Job, that his words 

 were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock. 

 The works of Homer and Hesiod are said to have 

 been first written on plates of lead, and many an- 

 cient documents on copper, of considerable extent, 

 are still met with in India. The use of the tablet- 

 stone is still familiar, and the sculptured rocks of 

 the north of Europe show the practice of consigning 

 records to this imperishable material to have been 

 frequent amongst our ancestors of the ninth and 

 tenth centuries. Some persons are of opinion that 

 the first writing was upon thin pieces of wood, 

 which from their convenience is very probable. 

 Such boards were used at an early period by the 

 Greeks and Romans, and were frequently covered 

 with wax, which was of course more readily writ- 

 ten upon than the bare wood. But such writing 

 would be more easily obliterated, and was therefore 

 used chiefly for temporary purposes. In one of the 

 comedies of Aristophanes, a debtor proposes to 

 elude the payment of his debt by melting with a 

 burning-glass the waxen tablet on which the trans- 

 action was recorded, while his creditor should be 

 looking over the account. When wax was used 

 any errors were easily erased by rubbing with the 

 blunt end of the piece of metal which served for a 

 pen. To make the characters more visible, it ap- 

 pears that some black substance was smeared over 

 the surface of the white wax, which remained in 

 the scratched marks. The convenience of this 

 process caused the practice to be continued long 

 after the introduction of other materials. 



Leaves of trees were used in ancient times by the 

 Egyptians, and probably by the Greeks. The "Hin- 

 doos continued the use of this material until within 

 these very few centuries, and even at the present 

 time books of leaves are not uncommon in the 



south of India, and in the- island of Ceylon. The 

 leaves of some Asiatic trees are, from their size and 

 smoothness, so admirably adapted for books, that 

 the cheapness and beauty of European paper has 

 not been able entirely to supersede their use. If 

 we may judge from the name of leaf being still ap- 

 plied to paper books, we should imagine t ; 

 leaves to have been formerly the principal material 

 in use. The interior bark of trees is of VIM \ ancient 

 use, and its Latin name (liber) seems to intimate 

 that it was as ancient among the Romans as the 

 art of writing itself; no other name being used for 

 a book than that of the writing material. In one 

 respect the bark was superior to the leaf ; it could 

 be rolled into a rolume, which was the favourite 

 form among the ancients, while the leaf would 

 crack if subjected to such a process. 



Linen cloth was occasionally used, but was never 

 very common. The mummy cases found in Egypt 

 have occasionally linen manuscripts folded in them, 

 and the Chinese before the invention of paper used 

 silk and cotton cloths. The Romans also wrote 

 on linen, as is stated by Pliny and others. Th 

 use of this material necessarily introduced an altera- 

 tion in the process of writing. All the other sub- 

 stances we have mentioned were rather engraved 

 than written upon, and an iron point was used for 

 the purpose. To write on linen it was necessary 

 to paint upon it with some coloured liquid, which 

 might get dry and leave a permanent mark. This 

 gave rise to the invention of pen and ink ; the first 

 ink used was probably composed of soot or lamp 

 black, mixed with some sort of size or gum-water. 

 An ink of this description may be somewhat less 

 flowing than our modern ink, and consequently less 

 adapted for rapid writing: but it has the great ad- 

 vantage of being a solid body of unalterable colour, 

 whereas our ink is liable to have its colour de&. 

 troyed by several chemical processes. The advan- 

 tage of a solid body appears in the manuscripts dug 

 up at Herculaneum, which although burned to a 

 perfect charcoal, and buried for nearly eighteen 

 centuries, are still legible ; the ink remaining as it 

 were embossed on the surface, and appearing blacker 

 than the burned paper, which, from having been 

 polished, reflects the light in a small degree. 



The instrument answering to our pen was the 

 reed, a sort of bulrush, which grew in many parts 

 of the East. Such reeds, cut in the manner of a 

 quill, are still used by all those nations who write 

 the Arabic character; and are found, even by Euro- 

 peans who have occasion to write much Persian or 

 A'rabic, to be more suitable to that character (a way 

 of writing from right to left) than our pens. Those 

 nations who have adopted the Chinese character use 

 a camel's-hair pencil, which is held perpendicularly 

 in the hand ; and although it would seem to us to 

 be but little adapted for quick writing, the Chinese 

 write their complicated characters with these im 

 plements with a rapidity seldom equalled by Euio- 

 pean writers. 



The quill appears to have been first in use about 

 the year 600: the word penna, meaning a quill, is 

 not found in any work older than that period, pre- 

 vious to which we usually find the word calamus, a 

 reed. This word still exists in the modern Italian 

 word calamajo, which signifies inkstand. The quill 

 has an advantage over the reed in being finer and 

 more durable, the same quill often serving for 

 weeks, and even months. Steel-pens have, within 

 these few years, come to supersede, in many cases, 

 the use of the quill. The skins of animals were 



