THE MANUFACTURE OF PAPER 



several centuries before this, even for official documents, 

 although parchment was the more common substance 

 for this purpose. 



Had man been able to take advantage of Nature's 

 hints more readily, he might have been a paper-maker 

 many centuries before he was. For Nature sometimes 

 makes a paper from a pulp in a manner almost identical 

 with the simpler process now employed by man. Man 

 makes paper by beating fibers into a pulp, soaking, and 

 then drying them. Nature does the same thing with the 

 water-plant known as the " conferna." This plant, grow- 

 ing in long filaments at the bottom of pools, is disinte- 

 grated by the action of the water, rising to the surface 

 as a pulpy scum. The winds and waves and currents 

 churn this about until, mixed into a true pulp, it finally 

 washes ashore and dries as a veritable sheet of paper. 

 It is quite possible that the first paper-makers of the 

 Flowery Kingdom took their cue to the discovery of 

 paper-making from this hint of Nature; but if so they 

 were more observing and receptive than their occiden- 

 tal neighbors. 



Paper-making seems to have been introduced into 

 France just at the close of the twelfth century, and as 

 the successors to the Moorish paper-makers in Spain 

 were making a mess of their work at that time, France 

 became at once the center of manufacture for fine 

 papers, with Holland as a good second. Indeed, these 

 two countries held a monopoly of the fine-paper manu- 

 facture for at least two centuries. Then England en- 

 tered the field of competition, and soon became a worthy 

 rival of the other two countries. 

 VOL. vm. ii [ 161 ] 



