ON MAIZE PAPER. 361 



keeps the shape of the sheet if carefully handled. Any writing in com- 

 mon ink is perceptible, even after the organic substance of the paper is 

 consumed." 



The machinery for the manufacture of this important material 

 from rags may be said to be almost perfect, but this perfection has been 

 gained at the expense of much labour, time, and money. 



Paper in more senses than one has ruined many an industrious and 

 honest man. The very machine which now supplies the world with an 

 endless sheet of paper, invented by Louis Bobert, proved the ruin of 

 the liberal and once wealthy firm of Messrs. Fourdriuier of London. 

 They spent 60,0001. in giving form and power to this beautiful piece of 

 mechanism, which, with the improvements it has since received, has 

 culminated in the astonishing results which may be now witnessed in 

 certain printing establishments in Europe. Waste cotton or rags, or, 

 for the sake of experimental illustration, a number of old shirts or 

 pocket-handkerchiefs may be put in at one extremity of the machine, 

 and traced through each step in the changes and processes to which they 

 are subjected, until, after a comparatively few minutes, they fall into 

 the hands of the wondering experimentalists, a printed sheet of paper, 

 containing the latest news of the day, or a stereotyped engraving of the 

 interior of the late International Exhibition. 



By the agency of the paper machine the old common process of 

 manufacturing this article hy hand, which occupied about three weeks, 

 is now reduced to about three minutes. In all the details of the manu- 

 facture, after the pulp is produced, the modern complete paper machine 

 may be said to be perfect. The distance the material has to travel in a 

 large machine, from the time the rags are introduced to the moment 

 when it becomes fit to print on, sometimes exceeds 1,000 feet ; and fine 

 writing paper is now made seventy inches in breadth, at the rate of 

 sixty feet a minute. The operation of sizing, drying, and cutting into 

 sheets is included in the time stated. It is the material from which the 

 pulp is made that is the grand desideratum of the day among paper 

 manufacturers. Next to rags, straw is generally acknowledged to be 

 the best available material for this purpose. It is largely used for 

 newspapers when mixed with a certain portion of rags, and the propor- 

 tion of straw used in connection with rags or paper shavings varies from 

 50 to 80 per cent. 



