taken pulp out of the vats with hand moulds and deckle, and have couched it on felts, substantially by the same method that was in use in Asia fifteen hundred years ago.
Oriental paper-makers do not use rags nor raw cotton for making their pulp. They select different kinds of bamboo, and the bark and leaves of various trees, which they combine in unequal proportions, so as to produce for different kinds of paper the different qualities of strength, smoothness and flexibility. These materials are saturated in lime water, and are sometimes boiled to free them from useless matter. Barks are sometimes triturated with pestles in a mortar. While the greatest care is taken to prevent the cutting of the fibres in too short lengths, every expedient is made use of to split up the fibres in the finest threads. The result of this care is the production of papers of wonderful strength and flexibility.
It is admitted by all historians that the early European practice of paper-making was derived from Asia. How the knowledge of the art was transmitted to us from China, Persia or India, and where and when paper was first made in Europe are questions of controversy. The difficulty we encounter in an inquiry concerning its derivation is aggravated by the discovery that two kinds of paper — one, said to be made of cotton, and another, said to be made of linen or rags — were used in Europe at a very early period — a period in which we find no traces of the existence of a European paper-mill. Proteaux says that a thick card or card-like paper came in use during the fifth century,[1] when the manufacture of papyrus was declining. But its first use was not as a substitute for papyrus or parchment It was called charta damascena, the card of Damascus; charta gossypina, or the cotton card; charta bombycina, or the silk-like card; serica, or the silky fabric. It was usually mentioned as a card; for it was so thick, and so unlike papyrus, that it was regarded as a different thing, and
- ↑ Proteaux, Practical Guide for the Manufacture of Paper, Paine's translation, p. 17. He does not name his authority for fixing the date in the fifth century, but it is not at all improbable that a card-like paper was then made for some other purpose than that of writing.
