MATERIALS USED FOR PAPER. 147 



tained lest the supply of white linen rags should 

 become wholly inadequate to the growing demands 

 of the different communities, and invention was 

 consequently taxed to discover some substitutes by 

 the employment of which the evil might be re- 

 medied. This pursuit was so far successful that 

 numerous substances had already been found ap- 

 plicable to this manufacture, when happily an im- 

 portant discovery of modern chemistry rendered all 

 this ingenuity unnecessary. It was found that by 

 calling in aid the bleaching properties of chlorine, 

 coloured prints and the coarsest canvas could alike 

 be made available for the production of the finest 

 paper ; while from useless manuscripts and torn and 

 soiled scraps the spotless sheet might again arise, 

 destined, perhaps, again to receive effusions as short- 

 lived as their predecessors. 



The discovery of the advantages of subjecting the 

 materials for paper to the action of this powerful 

 agent was first made known by the French chemists, 

 and thence it was gradually diffused and adopted in 

 this country. 



In the Transactions of the Society for the Encou- 

 ragement of Arts, &c., numerous experiments are 

 detailed of the manufacture of paper from various 

 materials, and in their library is to be seen a book 

 written in German, containing between thirty and 

 forty specimens of paper made of different materials*. 

 The author of this curious work was apparently one 

 of those enthusiasts who become so enamoured of a 

 particular pursuit as to cause every thing to be sub- 

 servient to the one great end which they propose. 

 However the more phlegmatic may sometimes be 

 tempted to smile at the curious conceits and strange 

 speculations of these characters, it is to such that 



* Economical use of the Vegetable Kingdom in making Paper, 

 by M. Schaffer. Ratisbon, 1765. 



