MANUFACTURE OF PAPER. 
Various are the materials on which mankind, in differ¬ 
ent ages and countries, have contrived to write their fen- 
timents ; as on (tones, bricks, the leaves of herbs and 
trees, and their rinds or barks ; alfo on tables of wood, 
wax, and ivory; to which may be added plates of lead, 
linen rolls, &c. At length the Egyptian papyrus was in¬ 
vented ; then parchment, then cotton paper; and, ladly, 
the common, or linen, paper. 
In fome places and ages they have even written on the 
(kins of fifhes ; in others on the inteftines of ferpents ; and 
in others on the back of tortoifes. There are few forts of 
plants but have at fome time been ufed for paper for 
books : and hence the feveral terms, biblos, codex, liber, 
folium, tabula, tillura, philura, Jcheda, §~c. which exprefs 
the feveral parts on which they were written : and, though 
in Europe all thefe difappeared upon the introduftion 
of the papyrus and parchment, yet in fome other coun¬ 
tries the ufe of divers of them obtains to this day. In 
Ceylon, for inftance, they write on the leaves of the 
talipot; and the Bramin manufcripts in the Talinga 
language, fent to Oxford from Fort St. George, are writ¬ 
ten on leaves of the umpana, or Palma Malabarica : Her- 
niannus gives an account of a mondrous palm-tree called 
codda pana, or Palma montana Malabarica, which, about 
the thirty-fifth year of its age, rifes to be fixty or feventy 
feet high, with plicated leaves nearly round, twenty feet 
broad ; with which they commonly cover their houfes ; 
and on which they alfo write, part of one leaf fufficing 
to make a moderate book. And Varro obferves, that, 
from the circumftance of leaves having been fil'd ufed for 
writing on, the fame word began, and continued, to fig- 
nify the leaf of a tree and the leaf of a book. See Phil. 
Tranf. N° 145, 246. 
In the Maidive iflands, the natives are faid to write on 
the leaves of a tree called macaraquean, which are a fathom 
and a half long, and about a foot broad. And in divers 
parts of the Ead Indies, the leaves of the Mufa arbor, or 
plantain-tree, dried in the fun, f'erved for the fame ufe, till 
of late that the French have taught them the ufe of Eu¬ 
ropean paper. Ray alfo enumerates divers kinds of 
Indian and American trees which bear leaves proper to 
be ufed as paper; particularly one called xagua, which has 
fomething in it extraordinary; its leaves are fo large, and 
of fo dole a texture, that they cover a man from top to 
toe, and fhelter him from the rain, and other inclemencies 
of the weather, like a cloak ; and from the innermofl fub- 
Itanceof thefe leaves, a paper is taken ; being a white and 
fine membrane like the (kin of an egg, as large as a (kin 
of our vellum or parchment, and nothing inferior for 
beauty and goodnefs to the bell of our papers. Hay's Hijl. 
Plantar, tom. ii. lib. 32. 
Paper is chiefly made among us of linen or hempen 
rags, beaten to a pulp in water, and moulded into fquare 
Iheets of the thicknels required. But it may alfo be made 
of nettles, hay, turnips, parfnips, colewort-leaves, afbeflus, 
or any thing that is fibrous ; nay, it may be made of white 
woollen rags; though this would not ferve for writing, 
becaufe of the hairinefs. Other fubflances are—the pith 
of thillles, the bark of the fallow (Salix capreata), hemp, 
fhaws of hemp, ffiaws of flax, hop-bines, (talks of cabbage, 
of mallow, of common broom, of the fun-flower (Helian- 
thus annuus), of mugwort, of clematis, &c. the down of 
the cat’s-tail, the catkins of the white poplar, the hulks of 
maize, flraw, &c. Trials of fome of thefe, and efpecially 
of flraw, have been made in England as far back as the 
year 1799 ; and in 1801, the Society of Arts gave a pre¬ 
mium of twenty guineas to Mr. Thomas Willmott, of 
Shoreham, Sufl’ex, for having made ten reams of paper 
from the pant-plant of Bengal, the Corchorus olitorius of 
4 
fyllematic writers. A fpecimen of the paper is placed in 
the volume (xix.) of their Tranfaftions for that year : it is 
of a whity-brown colour, like tea-paper, and does not bear 
writing-ink well. Much,therefore, remains to be done; 
and, as the occafion is important, efpecially as it relates to 
commerce, and to the promulgation of arts and fciences, 
we lhould be happy to find, that fome public-fpirited in¬ 
dividual, of enterprife and talent, would turn his atten¬ 
tion to an extenfive feries of experiments, for the purpofe 
of afcertaining the merits of thefe or other fubflitutes for 
linen rags, in the fabrication of paper for writing and 
printing. In the mean time, the Society of Arts conti¬ 
nued, and we believe (till continue, to offer premiums 
for the manufacture of paper from vegetable fubflances, 
particularly thofe which are the produce of Great Britain 
and Ireland. In the volume of their TranfaCfions for the 
year 1812, it is obferved, that, “ the object of the Society 
being to add to the number and quantity of raw mate¬ 
rials ufed in this manufacture, it is their wiffi to include 
every ufeful fort of paper, and to introduce fucli natural 
products as can be eafily and cheaply procured in great 
quantities. The Society are in poffeftion of two volumes 
containing a great variety of fpecimens of paper made 
from raw vegetable fubflances, viz. nettles, potatoe- 
haulm, poplar, hop-bines, &c. which volumes may be in- 
fpeCted by any perfon on application to the houfekeeper.” 
We (hall divide thehiflory of the manufacture of paper 
into feven feCtions; the lafl of which, however, is by far 
the moll important. 1. Egyptian paper. 2. Paper made 
from cotton. 3. Paper from the interior bark of trees, or 
liber. 4. Chinefe paper. 5. Japanefe paper. 6. Paper 
made from afbefuis. 7. Paper made from linen rags. 
I. Of the EGYPTIAN PAPER. 
This is the famous paper ufed by the ancients, which 
was made of a kind of reed called papyrus, growing in 
Egypt on the banks of the Nile. According to Ifidorus, 
this paper was firfl ufed at Memphis; and Lucan feems to 
be of the fame opinion ; 
Nondum flamineas Memphis connexere biblos 
Noverat. Pharjal. lib. iii. 
Whatever truth may be in this, it is certain, that, of all 
the kinds of paper ufed by the ancients, the papyrus was 
the mod convenient, both from its flexibility and from the 
eafe of fabrication. It was a prefent from nature, and re¬ 
quired neither care nor culture. 
It is not certain at what particular period the ancients 
began to make paper of papyrus ; but there are feveral au¬ 
thorities which prove the ufe of it in Egypt long before 
the time of Alexander the Great. 
Pliny, lib. xiii. cap. 11. gives a full defcription of the 
method of making this paper in Egypt; which fee 
abridged under Cyperus papyrus, vol. v. p. 524. 
There were paper-manufaCtories in divers cities of 
Egypt; but the greatefl and mod celebrated was that at 
Alexandria, where, according to Varro’s account, paper 
was fird-made. It is certain, at lead, it was from hence 
that Greece and Italy was furniffied, on account of the 
convenient fituation of that port; and it is more than 
probable it was this that gave the Romans occafion to 
conclude the art had been invented there. It was not till 
late, when Egypt was reduced into a Roman province, 
that they had much intercourfe with, or even knowledge 
of, the inland cities of Egypt, where paper was alfo made. 
The trade and confumption of this commodity were in 
reality incredible. Vopifcus relates, that the tyrant Fir- 
mius, who rebelled in Egypt, publicly declared he would 
maintain an army only with paper and glue, “ papyro 
& glutine.” 
