CHAPTER Vin. 

 THE MICROSCOPY OF PAPER. 



1. Paper and Paper-making. — The earliest written 

 records were probably made on such natural objects as 

 stones, leaves, bits of bone or wood, or, as in Babylonia 

 and Assyria, upon blocks of clay. A real paper, however, 

 the celebrated papyrus, was manufactured in Egypt many 

 hundred years before the Christian era. The thin, trans- 

 parent layers of tissue which surround the stem of the 

 papyrus plant were 'separated with some sharp instru- 

 ment, superposed under water and then pressed and 

 dried. Large quantities of this product were exported 

 from Alexandria to all parts of Europe and Asia, coming 

 into competition with parchment, prepared by scraping 

 and drying the skin of the sheep and goat. 



The modem process of making paper, as a thin layer 

 of cellulose derived from fibrous vegetable material re- 

 duced to a pulp in water, was first discovered by the 

 Chinese and introduced into Europe by the Arabs in the 

 eleventh century. Cotton was the first material used 

 for this purpose, but an Arabic manuscript on linen paper 

 bearing the date iioo is still in existence. The manu- 

 facture of paper from wood-pulp appears to have been 

 first suggested by the French naturalist, Reaumur, in 



95 



