era informs us, that sheep skins and goat skins were made use of in writing, by the ancient lonians. Mr. Yeates even thinks it exceedingly probable, that the very autograph of the Law, written by the hand of Moses, was upon prepared skins. In Exodus, xxxi. v. 14, we read, that ram's skins, dyed red, made part of the covering for the tabernacle; and it is a singular circumstance, that in 1806, Dr. Claudius Buchanan, obtained from one of the synagogues of the black Jews, in the interior of Malayala, in India, a very ancient manuscript roll, containing the major part of the Hebrew scriptures, written upon goat's skins, mostly dyed red ; and the Cabul Jews, who travel annually into the interior of China, remarked, that in some synagogues, the Law is still found written on a roll of leather; not on vellum, but on a soft flexible leather, made of goat's skins, and dyed red. Of the six synagogue copies of the Pentateuch in roll, which are all at present known in England, exclusive of those in the possession of the Jews, five are upon skins or leather, and the other upon vellum. One of these is in the collegiate library, at Manchester, and has never been collated. It is written upon basil, or brown African skins, and measures in length one hundred and six feet, and is about twenty inches in breadth. The letters are black, and well preserved, and the whole text is without points, accents, or marginal additions. — See Yeates' Collation. There are also, books made from the skins of sheep, goats, and asses, in the Vatican, at Rome; the royal library of Paris; and other public libraries. The poems of Homer were written on the intestines of a serpent, in letters of gold, and was one hundred and twenty feet long.
Linen cloth, on which letters were drawn, or painted with a pencil, was employed by the Egyptians when, it is supposed, they wished to transmit such things, as they wished to last very long. In the British museum, there is a piece of writing, of this nature, taken out of a mummy. The Romans, likewise, employed linen, libri lintei; not merely for what related to private subjects and persons, but as to enter the names of magistrates, treaties, or public documents. In the book of Job, we find the following text, "Oh that one would hear me, behold my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book." Parkhurst supposes, that Job probably alludes to the writing on linen, and wearing the record as a tiara on the head. We find, from Vopiscus, that the emperor Aurelian, wrote his journal or diary in linen books.
In India, it has been the custom, from time immemorial, to teach children to read by writing in sand ; and from thence, some parts of the Madras and Lancasterian systems of instruction, practised by Bell and Lancaster.
The employment of leaves, for the transmission of ideas, is of great antiquity. Pliny says one of the most ancient methods of writing, was upon the leaves of the palm tree; and afterwards upon the inner bark of trees, a mode of writing still common in different parts of the East Hence the word folio, from the Latin folium, a leaf, and the meaning of leaf when applied to a book. The Koran of Mahomet, was recorded at first by his disciples, on palm leaves, and the shoulder-bones of mutton, and kept in a domestic chest by one of his wives. In Tanjore, and other parts of India, the palmyra leaf is still used, on which they engrave with an iron style or pen; and so expert are the natives, that they can write fluently what is spoken deliberately. Virgil describes the sibyl writing her prophecies in detatched sentences, upon dry leaves, which were scattered by the wind when the door was opened.
