392 ART INDUSTRY AND RELATED OCCUPATIONS. 



else in Eastern Asia, or in the Himalayas, where bark-paper is 

 made. It has always therefore a yellow tint, varying according as 

 the raw material may be whitened or not by the water and other 

 ingredients used in the manufacture for softening it. 



According to Grosier,^ Chinese historians report that the art of 

 paper-making was invented in China about 105 A.D., by Tsai-lun. 

 Previous to this, the Chinese wrote on tissues of hemp and silk, on 

 bamboo tablets and palm leaves ; and in Farther India palm leaves 

 are still used in this way. The leaves of the palmyra palm 

 {Borassiis flabelliformis) especially serve this purpose in the Malay 

 Archipelago, where, as in the South Sea Islands, the manufacture 

 of paper, says Crawford,^ remains unknown even to the latest 

 times. 



The Chinese make paper out of the pith of the Aralia papyri- 

 fera from Formosa, which is the so-called rice-paper, and from young 

 bamboo cane, rice and wheat straw, rushes, cotton, hemp, and the 

 inner bark of several plants, especially the paper mulberry. They 

 also work up old paper into new of an inferior kind, as do also 

 the Japanese. It is said by Grosier that the people of a whole 

 village in the vicinity of Peking support themselves by collecting 

 and cleaning waste paper. In Southern China, the brittle paper 

 made from bamboo, the pith of Aralia, and straw is most manu- 

 factured and used ; in the North principally the stronger bark- 

 paper, although the production does not suffice for the great 

 demand for window panes, packing paper, and other things, so 

 that much is imported from Corea. 



The art of making paper from the bark of different trees was 

 brought from Corea to Japan about 610 A.D., and some say still 

 earlier. Owing to the manifold uses of paper in Japan, the manu- 

 facture gradually became one of the most important and extended 

 branches of industry, with which the cultivation of shrubs which 

 furnished raw material, the paper mulberry and three-forks {Edge- 

 worthid) went hand-in-hand. 



Paper and its manufactured products have been used in the 

 countries of Chinese civilization, and especially in Japan, since the 

 earliest times, not only for writing, painting, printing, packing, 

 handkerchiefs, and other detersives, but also for fans, screens, 

 umbrellas and parasols, lanterns, doll's clothes, waterproof cloaks 

 and head coverings, tobacco bags, cases and boxes, and for window- 

 panes instead of glass, the beautifully made lattices of the sliding 

 doors being covered with it. It serves also for making a strong 

 thread which is used for binding instead of cord and straw rope, as 

 well as for the woof of light cool fabrics, and, covered with gold 

 and silver, for the fine ornamentation of costly brocades. The 



^ Grosier: "La Chine." Vol. vii. p. 120. 



2 " The art of making a true paper from fibrous matter reduced to a pulp in 

 water, has never been known in, or introduced into, any of the Indian Islands." — 

 Crawford : Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands. London, 1856, p. 327. 



