312 NEPAL PAPER PLANT. 
these plants, may be seen in a plant common in our gardens, 
and used in medicine on account of its acridity, that is, the 
Mezereon, Daphne Mezereum of botanists. It is from the inner 
bark of one of these plants, the D. Bholua (D. cannabina of 
Loureiro, and which is supposed to be identical with the D. 
odora of Thunberg), which is extremely abundant in the 
Himalayas, that this Nepal paper is made, as from other species 
in other countries. Another plant of the same, or of an allied 
genus, as it is called both Daphne and Gnidia eriocephala, is 
very common on the ghauts of the West of India, and in the 
hilly parts of the Southern Mahratta country and of the 
Dukhun. Several specimens, from various localities, are in 
Col. Sykes’s collection. It is probable that it might be turned 
to the same use as the Nepal plant. 
Of the uses of this plant good accounts have been given by 
Mr. Hodgson (‘Journ. As. Soc.,’ i, p. 8, 1832) and Dr.Campbell. 
The former describes the process as consisting, first, in boiling 
slips of the inner bark of the paper plant in a ley of wood- 
ashes for about half an hour, by which time the slips will 
be quite soft. These are then beaten in a stone mortar with a 
wooden mallet till they are reduced to a homogeneous pulp. 
This is then diffused through water, and taken up in sieves and 
paper frames, as in the ordinary process for making paper by 
hand. When dry, the sheet of paper is folded up; sometimes 
it is smoothed and polished by being rubbed on wood with the 
convex side ofa conch shell: but Mr. Hodgson does not explain 
how the very large sheets of several yards square are made. 
Though called Nepalese, the paper is not manufactured in 
Nepal, but in Cis-Himalayan Bhote, in the midst of its 
immense forests, where there is an abundant supply of the 
plant, of wood for ashes and for firewood, as well as a constant 
supply of clean water. This paper is remarkable for its 
toughness, as well as its smoothness. Some of it, in the form 
of bricks of half-stuff, was sent to this country previous to the 
year 1829. As the quantity sent was not sufficient for a com- 
plete experiment, a small portion of it was made into paper 
by hand. An engraver, to whom it was given for trial, stated 
that “it affords finer impressions than any English-made 
paper, and nearly as good as the fine Chinese paper which is 
employed for what are called India paper proofs.” (‘ Gleanings 
