CHAPTER VIII. 
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 modern 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 r1oo is still in existence. The manu- 
facture of paper from wood-pulp appears to have been 
first suggested by the French naturalist, Réaumur, in 
95 
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