On the Structure of an Ancient Paper 1 . 
BY 
M. DAWSON, B.Sc. 
Botanical Laboratory , Cambridge. 
I N November last, Professor Marshall Ward handed to me 
a specimen of ancient paper, with the request that I should 
attempt to determine the botanical nature of the materials of 
which it was made. 
Examined macroscopically, the paper may be described 
as a light-brown felt-like substance, consisting of layers — 
easily separable one from the other — of closely interwoven 
fibres. 
1 The paper here referred to was one of four pieces of ancient MSS. which were 
sent to me by Mrs. Gibson of Castle Brae, Cambridge, for examination as to the 
materials of which they were composed. These MSS. are parts of a series 
discovered by Mrs. Gibson and Mrs. Lewis at Cairo in 1897, and which proved 
of some historical interest. They almost certainly came from the Genizeh or 
lumber-room of the Synagogue in Old Cairo, whose contents Mr. Schechter has 
brought to Cambridge. The writing on them is Hebrew, and refers to legal 
matters. Mrs. Gibson informs me that on one fragment there is conclusive 
evidence of the date, 1038, and further inquiry leads to the conviction that this 
is one of the oldest fragments of such writing in England. I subsequently received 
by Mr. Schechter’s kindness another fragment of a similar paper. On testing these 
five papers I found them to be made of flax or some similar fibre, and the subject 
seemed so interesting that I asked Miss Dawson to go more fully into the matter, 
which she has successfully done. — H. Marshall Ward. 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. XII. No. XLV. March, 1898.] 
