PAPYRUS 59 strative, and interrogative pronouns are also used. Verbs are always used in connection with a personal pronoun affixed, but do not admit of inflection. Tense and mood are indi- cated by special words, and only the present, past, and future are distinguished. There are also various adverbs of place, time, affirma- tion, negation, and doubt, as well as a large number of prepositions, conjunctions, and in- terjections. See Friedrich Muller, Allgemeine Ethnograpliie (Vienna, 18V3); Peschel, All- gemeine Vdlkerlcunde (2d ed., Leipsic, 1875) ; and the works cited above. PAPYRUS, the ancient name for paper, and for the plant which furnished the material from which it was made. The papyrus plant or pa- per reed belongs to the family of cyperacece or sedges, nearly related to the grasses, and as re- markable for the small number of its useful plants as the grasses are for their many valua- ble species. The papyrus was named by Lin- na3us cyperus papyrus ; but later botanists, re- garding this and several other species as suffi- ciently distinct, admit the genus papyrus, and call it P. antiquorum, a name which is gen- erally adopted. It was called papu by the Egyptians, whence the Greek irairvpos and our paper. Herodotus calls it byllus ((3v(3%os, whence the Greek fiiflMov, book, and our word Bible), and Strabo "biblus hieraticus. It grows on the marshy banks of rivers in Abyssinia, Syria, and Sicily, and formerly abounded on the banks of the Nile ; but according to Sir Gardner Wilkinson, it has disappeared from Egypt, and some think it never was indige- nous there, but was a native of Syria and Abyssinia, and has become extinct from want of culture. It has been seen in modern times in Abyssinia, in the neighborhood of Jaffa, on the banks of the Anapus near Syracuse, and according to some on the borders of Lake Men- zaleh in the delta of the Nile ; but the last was probably another species, and it is doubt- ful if the Sicilian plant is the papyrus anti- quorum, although it closely resembles it. The plant has large and abundant rootstocks, which spread in the mud and throw up numerous stems from 5 to 10 ft. high, the lower portion being submerged; the stem is triangular and smooth ; the leaves all spring from near the the upper part of the stem being quite naked and bearing its inflorescence at the apex in the form of a large compound umbel ; this consists of numerous slender branching pedun- cles, bearing at their extremities the flowers in small heads or spikes, and forming a grace- ful drooping tuft, which has at its base an in- volucre of long narrow leaves ; the small flat- tened spikes consist of six or more glumaceous flowers. The papyrus is frequently cultivated as a stove plant, both as a curiosity and for crits as a decorative plant, its tall naked . each bearing a delicate waving green um- bel at the top, making a well grown specimen a splendid object. Though aquatic, it can be cultivated in pots if freely watered, and may be planted in the open ground in summer if it can have a moist place or sufficient water. Anoth- er plant is sometimes found in cultivation as the papyrus, the related cyperus alternifolius ; this is smaller in every respect, and its much smaller heads or umbels are coarser and lack the graceful drooping character of those of the papyrus, but it is much more hardy. The right of growing and selling the papyrus was a government monopoly in Egypt, where its cultivation was restricted to the Sebennytic and Saitic nomes. It was used for a great va- riety of purposes besides paper. Its graceful plumes crowned the statues of the gods and decorated their temples ; its pith was eaten as food ; wickerwork boats, boxes, and baskets Papyrus. were woven of its stalk, and of its bark were made sails, cordage, cloth, mats, and sandals for the priests ; it was applied as medicine to the cure of fistulas and ulcers; it furnished material for torches and candles, and its roots were used for fuel and manufactured into furni- ture and household utensils. Wilkinson thinks however that some species of cyperus, and not the P. antiquorum, was used for many of these grosser purposes. In making paper the inner cuticle of the stalk was separated into thin laminaB by a sharp point. The finest were those next to the pith, and the layers, of which there were about 20, decreased in quality as they approached the outer integument, which was coarse and fit only for making cordage, mats, &c. The slips were laid side by side
