PAPER INDUSTRY. 391 



manner of making, and the slimy or gum-like vegetable cements 

 are dissolved in water, its firmness and toughness disappear when 

 it is wet, that is in all cases when the contact with water is not 

 excluded by saturating it with oil or lac. 



In the manufacture of the Japanese tub or hand-made paper, 

 the workman holds the form or scoop-net so that the parallel bam- 

 boo splinters or threads run from right to left. He lifts and lowers 

 the form in front of him and at right angles to that direction, caus- 

 ing the fibres of the material to move toward this side and lie 

 there. The consequence is that each sheet of Japanese bark paper 

 is torn easily and straight in this one direction, but with difficulty 

 and crooked and with a fuzzy edge in the other. The Japanese 

 knows and observes this fact whenever he tears a strip off for a 

 string, making the rent in the direction of the parallel fibres. 



The smoothness, evenness, and firmness of Japanese paper is not 

 effected by special sizing and glazing. Nevertheless each sheet 

 has usually a rough and a smooth side, which are designated Omote 

 and Ura, i.e. outer and inner side.^ These names relate to the pro- 

 cess of book printing, in which only the smooth side is printed. 

 The sheet is then so arranged in the middle that the fold comes 

 on the outside, the parallel ends lying one above another in the 

 back, the rough side of both half sheets facing inward, and the 

 printed, smooth side facing outward. The one side becomes 

 smooth, however, in comparison with the other in the drying pro- 

 cess. After the prepared and shaped sheet is firm enough, it is 

 pasted up with a large brush against a smooth, planed board, and 

 placed in the air to dry. The side next to the board will naturally 

 be much smoother than the outside, so that m this respect the de- 

 signations Omote and Ura must be changed in order to make 

 them harmonize with the fact. 



The porosity of Japanese paper unfits it, save in exceptional in- 

 stances, for writing on with pen and ink ; but it is well adapted to 

 the Japanese mode of writing with brush and Indian ink, from the 

 top of the page downward and in rows from right to left. The 

 smooth, firm, machine-made paper, so advantageous for our way 

 of writing, would not absorb the Indian ink so well, and so fail 

 in its purpose. In consequence of its porous nature, the pure bark 

 paper absorbs moisture and holds dust more easily than our stiff, 

 smoothed machine paper, with its mineral substances. \t is also 

 more open to the depredation of insects. The hygroscopic ab- 

 sorption of water is, however, with ordinary dry keeping never so 

 great as to appreciably injure it. 



There is no peculiar process of bleaching in Japan, nor anywhere 



^ German drawing-paper is generally smooth on one side and granulated on 

 the other, as is the beautiful hand-made paper of J. W. Zanders in Bergisch- 

 Gladbach. The English drawing-paper is like German writing-paper, smooth 

 on both sides, while the French Torchon on the other hand is particularly- 

 thick, and granulated on both sides. 



