REPRODUCTIONS IN PAPER BY VARIOUS METHODS 247 



made to take the place of paper ; whilst in some preparations china 

 clay, a substance apparently little suited for the purpose, has formed a 

 large, if not an important part of the admixture. 



In another periodical, published in 1895,^ is another inter- 

 esting article,^ too lengthy to reproduce here, but which points 

 out that — 



Paper is now made from almost everything which can be reduced 

 to pulp. The good old linen rags are now very little used, and only 

 for the very finest kinds of hand-made writing-papers, and for paper to 

 be used in printing the most costly and luxurious special editions of 

 books. For ordinary purposes new products, unheard of in the paper 

 trades until comparatively recently, are utilised on an immense scale. 

 Esparto grass, wood fibre, stems and leaves of all sorts of plants, grasses, 

 and even sea and fresh-water weeds, are pulped, and made either into 

 paper, or by different processes transformed into innumerable forms 

 capable of taking the place for many purposes of wood, stone, and even 

 of iron. When strong fibre is used the resulting substance may be 

 made so hard that it can hardly be scratched. 



The article goes on to mention that rafters, roof, walls and 

 their plastering, ceilings, floors, and all the interior and exterior 

 parts of a house, all the furniture, including even the piano, can be, 

 and have been, constructed in specially compressed and water- 

 proofed paper ; that a church, a factory chimney, gas-pipes, 

 tobacco-pipes, horse-shoes, false teeth, carriages, telegraph-poles, 

 boats, flower -pots, "glass," bed -quilts, stockings (!), cigars, 

 carpets, and so on — a sufficiently comprehensive list, — have 

 been, and are, made of paper or vegetable pulp of one kind or 

 another, and it will, therefore, not surprise the reader to learn, that 

 the desire to substitute some strong and light material for the 

 objectionably heavy plaster, led the writer first to study the 

 principles of " mask-making " at a theatre, and later to investi- 



^ Old and Young, vol. xlvi. No. 1264, pp. 4, 5. 

 = " Paper and its Uses," signed " Ben Olio." 



