PAPYKUS. I 1 /') 



a flowing plume ; paper was prepared from the inner bark of the stem, 

 by dividing it with a kind of needle into thin plates or pellicles, each of 

 them as large as the plant would admit. Of these strata the sheets of 

 paper were composed ; the pellicles in the centre were considered as the 

 best, and each plate diminished in value according as it receded from 

 that part. After being thus separated from the reed, the pieces, trimmed 

 and cut smooth at the sides, that they might the better meet together, 

 were extended close to and touching each other on a table; upon these 

 other pieces were placed at right angles. In this state the whole was 

 moistened with the water of the Nile, and while wet was subjected to 

 pressure, being afterwards exposed to the rays of the sun. It was 

 generally supposed that the muddy waters of the Nile possessed a 

 glutinous property, which caused the adhesion to each other of these 

 strips of papyrus. Bruce, however, affirms that there was no foundation 

 for this supposition, and that the turbid fluid has in reality no adhesive 

 quality. On the contrary, he found that the water of this river was, of 

 all others, the most improper for the purpose, until, by the subsidence of 

 the fecula, it was entirely divested of the earthy particles it had gathered 

 in its course. This traveller made several pieces of papyrus paper, both 

 in Abyssinia and in Egypt, and fully ascertained that the saccharine juice, 

 with which the plant is replete, causes the adhesion of the parts together, 

 the water being only of use to promote the solution of this juice, and its 

 equal diffusion over the whole. When there was not enough juice in the 

 plant, or when the water failed to dissolve it sufficiently, the strips were 

 united with paste made of the finest wheaten flour, made with Hbt water 

 and a small proportion of vinegar: after being dried and pressed, the 

 paper was then beaten with a mallet, by which means it was still farther 

 smoothed and flattened. Paper, thus made, was esteemed according to 

 its strength and whiteness. Sufficient evidence of the abundant use of 

 papyrus is to be found in the fact, that nearly 1,800. manuscripts written 

 on paper of this description, have been discovered in the ruins of 

 Herculaneum. 



Paper made of cotton entirely superseded the papyrus in the course of 

 time, as being much more durable, and better calculated for all the 

 purposes to which paper is ordinarily applied. This new substance was 

 called char (a bombycina. It cannot be exactly ascertained when this 

 manufacture was first introduced. Montfaucon fixes the time at the end 

 of the ninth or early in the tenth century, a period when the scarcity of 

 parchment, and the failure in the supply of papyrus, called forth the 

 powers of invention to supply an adequate substitute. It was about this 



