PAPER manufacturers have tried all the pulp-making substances. This statement to the unlearned must seem curious, because in the very early times they were content with a single material and that did not even require to be first made into the form of pulp. When the supply of papyrus failed, it was rags which they substituted. By the simplest processes they produced a paper with which our best cannot compare. In some countries great care is exercised in selecting the quality of paper for official use, in others none at all. What will be the state of our archives a few hundred years hence, if they be not continually recopied? Some of the printed paper rots even more quickly than written. The late Pope at one time invited many of the savants, chemists and librarians of Europe, to meet at Einsiedlen Abbey in Switzerland. He requested that the subject of their discussions should be both ink and paper. He volunteered the information, already known to the initiated, that the records of this generation in his custody and under his control were fast disappearing and unless the writing materials were much improved he estimated that they would entirely disappear. It is stated that at this meeting the Pope's representative submitted a number of documents from the Vatican archives which are scarcely decipherable though dated in the nineteenth century. In a few of those of dates later than 1873 the paper was so tender that unless handled with exceptional care, it would break in pieces like scorched paper. These conditions are in line with many of those which prevail with few exceptions in every country, town or hamlet. A contributory cause as we know is a class of poor and cheap inks now in almost universal use. The other is the so-called "modern" or wood-pulp paper in general vogue. Reaumur, as already stated, back in 1719 suggested from information gathered in examinations of wasps' nests, that a paper might be manufactured from wood. This idea does not appear to have been acted upon until many years later, although in the interim inventors were exhausting their ingenuity in the selection of fibrous materials from which paper might be manufactured. The successful introduction of wood as a substitute for or with rags in paper manufacture until about 1870 was of slow growth; since which time vast quantities have been employed. In this country alone millions of tons of raw material are being imported to say nothing of home products. Its value in the cause of progress of some arts which contribute greatly to our comfort and civilization cannot be overestimated, but nevertheless the wood paper is bound to disintegrate and decay, and the time not very far distant either. Hence, its use for records of any kind is always to be condemned.