No one knows now why Pott, which once
bore a tankard—an intelligible pun enough
—should now have the Royal arms in a
simple shield, without motto or supporters,
impressed on it; or why Foolscap should be
stamped by Britannia, on a lion rampant, in
an oval surmounted by a crown. Was there
a wicked jest in the mind of the mouldmaker
who first sewed his wires into the
likeness of the genius of Britain as the watermark
of his Foolscap, discarding the cap and
bells which anciently and more fitly
emblazoned that respectable sheet ? That
mould-maker was a wag in his way, but a
libellous one too, let us hope. Post is marked
with a postman's horn, in a shield with a
crown. That is as intelligible as Pott's
ancient sign. Copy has a fleur de lys only;
Demy, and several larger sorts, a fleur de lys
in a crowned shield; Royal, a shield with a
bend sinister and a fleur de lys for crest.
But generally the names or initials of the
makers are added to these technical marks,
together with the date of production.
Uncoloured paper is called yellow laid or
yellow wove, according to the mould used;
and the blue laid or blue wove, is coloured
with malt (blue glass finely powdered, and
containing oxide of cobalt), or with ultramarine,
an artificial compound made of soda,
clay-earth, and sulphur, and both cheaper
and more effective than cobalt. Pink blotting
paper is made of all the red rags in the
manufactory, chiefly of Adrianople pocket-
handkerchiefs; and blue wrapping-paper is
made in like manner of blue rags, as far as
they will go, supplying the deficiency by
colouring white ones with Prussian blue.
Whity-brown paper is produced by hempen
rags; and the deep rich brown packing-paper,
when not coloured by natural ochres, comes
from tarred ships' ropes. The purple sugar
papers of our grocers are due to logwood;
and the yellowish tint of cartridge is from
unbleached linen.

The thinnest paper made is tissue paper,
the slenderest of the unsized or water-leaf
kind: next in substance, still of the same
order, is copying post, used for taking, by
pressure, copies of letters written in sugared
ink: then come our old friends the Adrianople
handkerchiefs, in the disguise of blotting
paper: then the filtering paper, used by
chemists in their laboratories: and lastly,
plate-paper, for taking off impressions from
metal plates and lithographs. All other
white papers are sized. In China, Japan,
and other countries, they use a vegetable
size, such as the gluten of rice, &c.; on the
Continent, chiefly a compound of flour, resin,
and soda; here, we have carefully prepared
animal gelatine. But both vegetable and
animal sizings require alum to keep them from
putrefying. After sizing, writing papers are
surfaced, hot-pressed, milled, or else rolled
or calendered, and, when brought up to the
extreme point of luxury, glazed.

Tracing paper is made by filling up the
pores of common tissue paper with a varnish
composed of turpentine and Canada balsam.
When dried, this paper takes ink and colour
perfectly, but sometimes turns yellow with
keeping, and is always brittle and deficient
in suppleness. A clearer and more supple
kind is made by nut oil added to turpentine;
but this is greasy, and will not accept ink or
water-colours. The French make a very
superior tracing paper without grease or resin,
called papier végétal. It is made of new flax.
The strongest paper made is Scotch bank-note
paper: the weakest, is blotting paper.
Next to the Scotch bank-note stands
cartridge: in the line immediately above the
blotting paper is drawing paper. One of
these is a water-leaf; but the weakness of
drawing paper is owing to the excessive
bleaching it has undergone by chlorine, and
also to the shortness of the fibre, it having
been beaten into very short, and consequently
weakened, fibres. Waterproof paper is made
by three solutions; one of white soap, another
of alum, and a third of glue and gum arabic.
These three compounds united, fill the pores
of the paper so entirely as to render it
completely waterproof. As for all the marbled,
shaded, combed, curled, curled and combed,
iridescent, and all papers of modern use,
it would be impossible to give even a
catalogue of the various methods employed in
making them. The broad outline of the
process, in England, is, a bath of mucilage of
gum tragacanth and water; a workman with
various brushes full of various colours, which
are jerked or shaken in drops of various
sizes on the surface of the bath; a sheet of
paper laid flat on the bath, then skilfully
turned up over a stick placed across, carrying
with it all the colours already sprinkled;
and the paper is then marbled according to
the pattern and the colours of the bath.
Iridescent paper is made by the addition,
say, of silver-coloured mica, finely powdered
crystals, metallic dust, and in some instances
a shining kind of talc, have been strewn over
it. Metallic dust is made of the filings of
different metals, which are first washed in a
strong lye, then placed in a plate of iron or
copper over a strong fire, where they are
continually stirred till their colour is altered.
The filings of tin, by this process, become every
shade of gold colour, with a metallic lustre;
those of copper, different shades of red and
flame colour; those of iron and steel, blue or
violet; and those of tin and bismuth, white
and blue-and-white. Flock papers are made
of clippings of cloth or dyed wools, reduced
to powder and strewn on their proper places,
which have been already covered with strong
gum; and powdered steatite, or French
chalk, is used for satin papers, Paper hangings
are printed either with blocks, as cottons
and cloths are printed in patterns, or are
stencilled by means of cut forms. But the
best thing we can say of paper is, that it is