330 PAPER MAKING. 



together by the muddy \vat< rs of the Nile ; or, when those were 

 not to be had, with paste made of the tinest win at Hour, mixed with 

 hot water and a sprinkling of vinegar. The pellicles were next 

 pressed, to ;et out tlie water, then dried, and lastly liatted and 

 smoothed, by beating them with a mallet: this wa.-> die Ktryptian 

 paper, which was sometimes further polished by rubbing it w>tha 

 glass ball, or the like. 



Uurk paper was only the inner whitish rind, inclosed between 

 the bark and the wood of several trees, as the maple, plane, beech, 

 and elm, but especially the tilia, or linden-tree, which was that 

 mostly used for this purpose. On this, stripped off, Hatted, and 

 dried, the ancients wrote books, several of which are said to be still 

 extant. 



Chinese paper is of various kinds; some is made of the rinds or 

 barks of trees, especially the mulberry-tree and elm, but chiefly of 

 the bamboo and cotton-tree. In fact, almost each province has its 

 several paper. The preparations of paper made of the barks of trees 

 may be instanced in that of the bamboo, which is a tree of the cane 

 or reed kind. The second skin of the bark, which is soft and white, 

 is ordinarily made use of for paper: this is beat in fair water 

 to a pulp, which they take up in large moulds, so that some sheets 

 are above twelve feet in length : they are completed by dipping 

 them, sheet by sheet, in alura water, which serves instead of the 

 size among us, and not only hinders the paper from imbibing the 

 ink, but makes it look as if varnished over. The paper is white, 

 soft, and close, without the least roughness, though it cracks more 

 easily than European paper; is very subject to be eaten by the 

 worms, And its thinness makes it liable to be soon worn out. 



Cotton paper is a sort of paper which lias been in use upwards 

 of six hundred years. In the grand library at Paris are manu- 

 scripts on this paper, which appear to be of the tenth century ; and 

 from the twelfth century, cotton manuscripts are more frequent 

 than parchment cnes. Cotton paper is still made in the East In. 

 dies, by beating cotton rags to a pulp. 



Linen or European paper appears to have been first introduced 

 among us towards the beginning of the fourteenth century, but by 

 whom this valuable commodity was invented is not known. Toe 

 method of making paper of linen or hempen rags is as follows. 



The first instrument is called the duster, made in the form of a 

 cylinder, four feet in diameter, and five feet in length. It is alto- 



