48 The Manufacture of Paper. 
inferior quality are used, they need much time and labour to 
fit them for conversion into white paper. It is well known 
that almost every vegetable fibre may be used in making 
paper, but though experiments have been made for the past 
hundred years to find a substitute for rags, only very 
limited success has attended any of them. In the British 
Museum there is a collection of sixty specimens of paper 
made from different materials, the result of one man’s ex- 
periments in or about the year 1770 ; and the Patent-office 
reports teem with patents for the use of various fibres, or 
the method of treating those already proposed. But no fibre 
has yet been found to make a paper equal to white linen 
rags. Some on account of their comparatively trifling value, 
arising from the limited use to which they are otherwise 
applicable, can be used to mix in various proportions with 
rags to make the cheaper white papers, such as that used for 
newspaper, which is now seldom made with more than 
thirty per cent. of rags. Up to the present date, everything 
proposed as a perfect substitute for rags has been ex- 
cluded by the cost of freight or preparation, or by these 
expenses combined. It is within the last ten years that 
straw came into use as a partial substitute for rags in poor 
white papers; and until lately the difficulty of and expense 
of removing the silicious coating and other expenses con- 
nected with working it, made the paper cost almost as much 
as pure rag paper. About 1860, esparto, a tough Spanish 
grass, was introduced into England, and since then into 
Belgium, and some has even found its way to the United 
States. 
In England this grass has almost wholly superseded straw 
in white papers, and also to a great extent in brown and 
wrapping papers. Though in the latter so many articles 
may be used that it is very difficult to arrive at a correct 
estimate of the quantity of any one of the components in the 
brown paper of any country. The best brown papers of 
England and America consist in a great measure of Manilla 
hemp derived from waste and worn-out cordage ; and jute 
fibre, either derived from old bags or waste fibre, shipped 
direct from Calcutta; and, as I have mentioned esparto in- 
England, the cost of freight and customs’ duty to a great. 
extent preventing its use in America. The amount annually 
imported into England is about 15,000 tons, and is worth 
about £6 per ton, Jute is also lar oely imported, but I have 
~ no data as to the amount. 
