MATERIALS USED FOR PAPER. 141 



cess, French paper-makers have been brought over, 

 and even the water used in France (on which it 

 was supposed the quality might depend) has been 

 imported, but hitherto without effecting any great 

 improvement. 



The art of making paper from vegetable fibres 

 reduced to a pulp was not only known, but brought 

 to a considerable degree of perfection in China in 

 very remote ages. According to Martini, this manu- 

 facture was carried on among the Chinese at least 

 160 years before Christ. Nor do they confine them- 

 selves to any one particular material in this manu- 

 facture, but in each province judiciously avail them- 

 selves of that which is found of a suitable nature and 

 in the greatest abundance. Cotton, linen rags, the 

 bark of the mulberry and other trees, rice and 

 wheaten straw, nettles, the leaves of a species of 

 artemisia or mugwort, a particular kind of grass, 

 the young bamboo, are each in turn employed in the 

 formation of paper*. 



In the time of Marco Polo (the thirteenth century) 

 great use was made of the mulberry-tree. " The 

 Grand Khan/' says the Venetian traveller, " causes 

 the bark to be stripped from those mulberry-trees, 

 the leaves of which are used for feeding silkworms, 

 and takes from it that thin inner rind which lies be- 

 tween the coarser bark and the wood of the tree. 

 This being steeped, and afterwards pounded in a 

 mortar until reduced to a pulp, is made into paper, 

 resembling that which is manufactured from cotton." 



At the same time (long before such a medium was 

 thought of in Europe) a paper currency was esta- 

 blished in China. The paper of the mulberry-tree 

 was cut into pieces of different sizes, according to 

 the value they were intended to represent ; each piece 



* According to the Jesuit missionaries, they even convert the 

 stem of the cotton shrub into paper. 



