PAPEtt MAKING. 329 



In some places and ages they hav even written on the skins of 

 fishes; in others, on (he intestines ot se pents ; and in others, on 

 the backs of tortoise". Mabill. de Re Diplotn. lib. i. cap. 8. Fa- 

 bric. Biblioth. Nat. cap. 21, &c. There are few sorts of plants 

 but have at some time been used for paper and books : and hence 

 the several terms, biblos, codfi, libfT, fo'ium, tabula, tillura, 

 philura, scheda, &c. whirh express the s< veral parts on which they 

 were written : and though in Kurope ail these disappeared upon 

 the introduction of the papyrus Hnd parchment, yet in some other 

 countries the use of divers of them obtains to this day. In Ceylon, 

 for instance, they write on the leaves of the talipot. And the 

 Bramin MSS. in the Tulinga language, sent to Oxford from Fort 

 St. George, are written on leaves of the ampana, or palma Malaba. 

 rica : Hermannusgiv<rs an account of a monstrous palm, tree called 

 codda palma, or palma muntana JVlalabarica, which about the 

 thirty-fifth year of its age rises to be sixty or seventy feet high, with 

 plicated leaves nearly round, twenty feet broad, wherewith they 

 commonly cover their houses, and on which they also write, part 

 of one leaf sufficing to make a moderate book. They write be. 

 tween the folds, making the characters through the outer cuticle. 

 Knox. Hist. Ceyl. lib. iii. Le Clerc. Bibl. Univ. torn, xxiii. p. 242. 

 Phil. Trans. No. 226, p. 422, seq. Vide Hort. Ind. Malab. p. 3. 

 Phil. Trans. No. 145, p. 108. 



In the Maldive islands, the natives are said to write on the 

 leaves of a tree called macaraquean. which are a fathom and a half 

 long, and about a foot bruad. And in divers parts of the East 

 Indies, the leaves of the nuisa arbor, or plantain.tree, dried in the 

 sun, served fur the same use. 



Egyptian paper was principally used among the ancients ; being 

 made of the papyrus, or biblus, a species of rush, which grew on 

 the banks of the Nile : in making it into paper, they began with 

 lopping off the two extremes of the plant, toe head and the root : 

 the 'remaining part, which was the stem, they cut lengthwise into 

 two nearly equal parts, and from each of these they stripped the 

 scaly pellit les of which it consisted. The innermost of these pel. 

 iicles were looked on as the best, and that nearest the rind the 

 worst : they were therefore kept apart, and made to constitute 

 two different sorts of paper. As the pellicles were taken off, they 

 extended them on a table, laying them over each other transversely, 

 so that the fibres made right angles : in this state they were glued 



