THE TECHNOLOGIST. [June 1, 18 65 



506 MINERAL SUBSTANCES FOR WRITING ON, 



upon which, with all its grandeur and splendour, the silence of the g?are 

 has rested for thousands of years. The new world also has its 

 memorials cut in the rocks- and these rock inscriptions tell us even in 

 our days of the grandeur, wealth, and cultivation which once existed in 

 the Inka's golden land under the mild sway of the Sons of the Sun. 



Thus are recorded on these stones- and ruins the life of nations and 

 the events of history ; the common every-day life, however, also required 

 some means of communication, and this could not express its thoughts 

 in seulptuied inscriptions. The ohscure. hieroglyphics sufficing no 

 longer, this want led to the invention of letters, which of course brought 

 other materials into use for their ideal inscription. 



Previous to the formation of language man required no writing 

 materials ; with language he created the art of writing. Their first rude 

 forms were tokens and monuments composed of mounds of earth, heaps 

 of stones, stakes, and such like.. Wedges and chisels were the instru- 

 ments used in Babylon and China, those earliest seats of human cultiva- 

 tion, for writing upon fiat burnt tiles and thin slate-like flakes of stone. 

 Then pointed stones and still later metal styles were used to write with. 

 Stone was succeeded by plates of metal, then tablets of wood upon 

 which the letters were engraved by bones and copper. Then the 

 wooden tablets were covered with wax and horn or silver styles used for 

 writing with : these waxen tablets were in great favour among the 

 Greeks and Romans for daily use, and they offered the advantage of 

 being used over and over again, as all that was inscribed by the point 

 of the style could easily be effaced with the other flat end of the 

 same. 



To the same period belongs the use of the skins of beasts and leaves 

 of trees, those of the palm being first used by the Egyptians. The 

 leaves were soon supplanted by the bast or inner bark of trees, 

 especially of the lime, birch, elm, and maple, in which the letters were 

 scratched with needles and subsequently with the style. The ancient 

 Germans first wrote upon the bark of the birch-tree. From bark to 

 linen or cotton tissues was but a step, and pencil and colour became 

 style and ink. 



About the time of Alexander the Great (336—323 B.C.) the 

 papyrus-plant, which has given paper its name, came into use. This 

 remarkable plant flourishes on the banks of the rivers of Calabria, 

 Sicily, and especially on those of the Nile in Egypt, and like our reed 

 it forms in those regions perfect forests or jungles on the banks. The 

 paper was made of the inner skin of the stalks of plants still in sap, by 

 ripping it from the stalk with fine needles or sharp-edged shells, 

 several such leaves being then fastened together with Nile water, dried, 

 and finally polished with teeth ; the paper thus prepared being 

 called " Biblos." 



Shortly afterwards, about the year 200 B.C., parchment was invented, 

 being so called after the city of Pergamus, the place of its origin, and 



