A kind of bark paper was manufactured in Europe previous to the introduction of linen ("cotton," "Bombycina") paper from the East. The ancient Chinese made various kinds of paper and had a method of producing pieces sometimes forty feet in length. The Chinese record, called "Sou kien tchi pou," states that a kind of paper was made from hemp, and another authority (Du Halde) observes, "that old pieces of woven hemp were first made into paper in that country about A. D. 95, by a great mandarin of the palace." Linen rags were afterwards employed by the Chinese. The introduction of "linen" paper into Europe did not materially affect or interfere with the use of parchment or vellum until after the invention of printing in the fifteenth century. The class of substances to which parchment and vellum belong has already received some consideration but is a subject well worth some further discussion. Allusions are found in some of the classical writers to inscriptions written on the skins of goats and sheep; it has, indeed, been asserted by some scholars that the Books of Moses were written on such skins. Dr. Buchanan many years ago discovered, in the record chest of some Hebrews at Malabar, a manuscript copy of the greater part of the Pentateuch, written in Hebrew on goat's skins. The goat skins were thirty-seven in number, dyed red, and were sewn together, so as to form a roll forty-eight feet in length by twenty-two inches in width. At what date this was written cannot be now determined, but it is supposed to be extremely ancient. The Hebrews began, early after the invention of parchment, to write their scriptures on this material, of which the rolls of the law used in their synagogues are still composed. Scriptural, like many other classes of MSS. originating previous to the eighth century and ink written either on parchment or vellum, or both, are in capital letters without spaces between words and exceedingly rare. The more important and valuable of them which apply to the New Testament are respectively known as the Sinaitic, the Vatican and the Alexandrian, many of whose various translations and readings are incorporated by Tischendorf in his Leipzig edition of the English New Testament. The stories relating to the discovery and obtaining of these relics of the first centuries of our era are startling ones. The reputation and standing, however, of the discoverers, and the investigations subsequently made by known scholars of their time, serves to invest them with a certain degree of truthfulness. The most interesting is the story about the Sinaitic codex, the oldest of any extant and which is best told by Madan: