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CHAPTER VIII. 

 MATERIALS USED FOR PAPER. 



OF all the numerous vegetable substances which 

 contribute to the nourishment or comfort of man, we 

 are indebted to none more than to those which are 

 convertible into paper, that most commodious, port- 

 able, and invaluable substance, which preserves arid 

 transmits thought through succeeding- centuries, arid 

 to remote countries. 



When the art of writing was first invented, the 

 skins or hides of animals, the barks of trees, the 

 broad, strong, and lasting leaves of the palm, or a 

 plane surface of stone or metal, were most probably 

 used. These were succeeded or accompanied, in 

 some countries, by tablets of wood coated with wax, 

 on which (and all writing was then performed by 

 incision) the writer engraved his characters with a 

 stylus or some other implement. 



The first manufactured paper we hear of, was that 

 made from the papyrus, a species of reed growing 

 abundantly in the waters of the Nile. We have no 

 means of judging whether the art of making it ori- 

 ginated among the Egyptians themselves. The first 

 paper of the sort, known to the Greeks and Romans, 

 appears, beyond a doubt, to have been manufac- 

 tured in Egypt. As the article became known and 

 valued, it formed an important branch of commerce 

 to the Egyptians, who exported it in large quantities. 

 Either a deficiency in the supply, or, as it is more 



