without reserve; much after the fashion of
our little ivory tablets, but not so small, nor
so elegant.

The Chinese have various kinds of paper,
varying with the province. Some kinds are
made of linen rags (for the Celestials have
anticipated us in many discoveries which
have revolutionised the West and remained
stationary with them); some of young bamboo;
in the north, from the inner bark of the
mulberry-tree; in other provinces, from the
outer case of the silkworm's cocoon; and
again, in another part, from the Tree-paper,
or the tree from which a large quantity is
made; and from the cotton shrub. All our
Indian proof-paper comes from China; and
the celebrated rice-paper is also Celestial.
Their method of making paper—say from the
bamboo, which is the most common
substance—is to reduce the whole plant to a
pulp, by pestle and mortar, after having
soaked it in water for a fortnight, and buried
it first in dry lime, then in slaked line. To this
pulp is added a gummy infusion from a plant
called koteng, when the whole mass is again
beaten into a viscous fluid, laid in moulds,
and dried in the sun, or by sticking the
sheets against the face of a flue. The size is
made of fish-glue, dissolved in hot water,
and with twice its weight of alum; and
the papers are silvered by a secret process,
which employs no silver. But all vegetable
papers, no matter how well-made, are more
brittle than those manufactured from rags.

The Japanese make their paper from the
mulberry tree, and the material of which it
is made is of such strength that cordage may
be fashioned from it. They also make paper
for bed-hangings, tents, umbrellas, gowns,
cloaks, &c., and in such excellent imitation of
silks and stuffs, that it is often taken for
them. It is rendered water-tight by paintings
and coloured varnishes, and is a
universalism, supplying all imaginable wants.

Trials have been made of all possible and
impossible fibrous and non-fibrous substances.
A Mr. Edward Lloyd worked hard to make
an incombustible paper out of asbestos. The
asbestos was pounded until it became like a
fine down, then sifted and pressed into a
coarse kind of paper that would not burn
any more than a salamander. But the
experiment did not answer, and was
soon abandoned. Uninflammable, if not
incombustible, paper can be, and is, made at
this present time, by using a strong solution
of alum, or the double sulphate of alumina
and potash, or alumina and soda. The
best substance to use is the silicate of
potash. Touch-paper, on the contrary,—
paper that will burn, without flame, at a
mere spark,—is made by steeping it in a
solution, either of saltpetre or tartarate of
lead; which last is the best, as not tending to
absorb moisture from the air, as saltpetre
does.

Nettles, hay, turnips, parsnips, colewort,
the pith of thistles, the bark of the sallow,
hemp, the shaws of hemp, hop-bines,
flax, cabbage-stalks, the stalks of the
mallow, corn, broom, sunflower, mugwort, and
clematis, the down of the cat's-tail grass,
the catkins of white poplar, the husks of
maize, straw—in fact, everything fibrous has
been taken in hand as a substitute for the
fast-diminishing rags, on the supply of which
so much of our intellectual advancement and
moral progress depend. Straw seems likely
to be brought into extensive use. This is
not a new invention, though it is only of late
application. It was made as long ago as
seventeen hundred and ninety-nine. In
eighteen hundred and one, the Society of
Arts gave a premium of twenty guineas to
Mr. Thomas Willmott, of Shoreham, Sussex,
for having made ten reams of paper from the
Paut plant of Bengal, the Corchorus olitorius
of botanists. A specimen of this paper was
placed in the nineteenth volume of their
Transactions, where it may be seen to this
day. It is a whity-brown paper, something
like tea-paper, and does not bear the ink well.
In the volume of Transactions for eighteen
hundred and twelve, the Society states that
it has two volumes containing a great variety
of specimens of paper made of raw vegetable
substances, namely, potato halm, poplar,
hop-bines, &c.

The manufacture of straw paper has now
become of great importance. It has
materially aided the cheap press; without
it, indeed, few of our penny
cotemporaries would have been in existence.
It is more brittle than linen paper, less
pleasant as a reading medium, showing the
printing on the other side too plainly, and
thus confusing the type. But it was a great
boon, and is of incalculable advantage;
coming into use as it did, just at the moment
when we needed a cheaper paper than that
made out of rags, and when, indeed, serious
fears were entertained that the future supply
of rags would be unequal to the demand.
Another great discovery is, that old paper
can be re-made and turned out fresh and
ready for active service. This is as it
should be. All through nature is seen the
most wonderful system of renovation, endless
transformations, and perpetual resurrections;
the old constantly subserving the new, and
the worn-out perennially restored to youth
and use. The Phœnix is no fable: it is a
very plain allegory of natural transmutations:
and, without being grandiloquent, we
may say, that the restoration of old, printed,
despised, worn-out paper, which has carried
its message and done its work, into a new,
clean, white sheet, which has its work to do
and its mission to fulfil, is about the happiest
application of the Phœnix fable that we
know of.

The watermarks in paper alone deserve
an article to themselves; although the
original history of many of them is lost.