VOL. XXXVir.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 4Q3 



have been much out of the way, since the ancients had their thecse graphiarias, 

 which name will agree very well with this brass case, and the instrument found 

 within it. From the stylus used to form letters comes that figurative expression 

 that a person writes such or such a sort of a style, to denote his manner, as a 

 lofty style, or a low style; which way of speaking our own and other modern 

 nations have introduced into their language.* 



As to the several sorts of charta used for writing, he observes the most 

 ancient were made of barks of trees, or skins, or were such as are called pugil- 

 lares. The oldest were of the inner bark of trees, called liber in Latin, whence 

 a book had the name of liber; but very little of this sort is now in being, ex- 

 cept the Egyptian papyrus may be accounted one species of it. 



The papyrus was called Bugxo; or Blgxo; by the Greeks, and thence their books 

 Bi'bAoi or Bi'SAia. This sort of charta was made of a plant-f- having many pelli- 

 ceous tunicles, as Pliny informs us, which were separated from one another by 

 a needle, and then glued again together, to give them a strength and firmness 

 suflicient to retain what might be written on them. Alexandria was the place 

 most eminent for this manufacture. There are some fragments of this sort 

 still extant in Libraries, particularly the famous manuscript of St. Mark's gospel 

 at Venice. 



The chartae membranaceae are made of the skins of animals, dressed either 

 like our glove-leather, or modern parchment. The first sort was commonly 

 used by the Jews for writing the law of Moses on it, and from the rolling up 

 of these skins comes the word volumen. But the skins which Varro and Pliny 

 say were first made by Eumenes king of Pergamus, were in more common use: 

 however, Eumenes, who is related by these authors to have made them in op- 

 position to Ptolemy king of Egypt, who had forbidden the exportation of the 

 papyrus from his dominions, does not seem to be the inventor of the chartae 

 membranaceae ; since Herodotus, who lived long before his time, informs us, 

 that the lonians and other nations used to write on goat and sheep-skins, 

 Josephus also tells us, that the Jews sent their laws written on skins in letters 

 of gold to Ptolemy; by which it seems as if the writing on skins was no new 

 thing at that time among the Jews. 



The use of the pugillares was also very ancient, being mentioned by Homer, 



* And it might be further observed, that our phrase of " changing or altering the style," might 

 arise from the writer's inverting the stylus, to smooth out or obliterate some part with its flat end, 

 in order to intioduce some alteration in the writing on the tables of wax or lead, &c. Also, from the 

 circumstance of the styli being sometimes used as daggers, might come the idea and expression of 

 " writing in blood." Edit. 



f There is a learned dissertation on this plant by Montfaucon, in the 6'th vol. of the Mem. de 

 r Acad, des Inscriptions, and a good figure of it in Bruce's Travels. It is the Cyperus papyrus Linn. 



