A species of paper was manufactured at a remote period in Egypt, from the _papyrus_ or _paper-reed_, a plant growing freely on the banks of the Nile. A manufacture of paper from the bark of trees and other substances existed also in China from a very early date; but among the nations of antiquity, before the introduction of paper, such substitutes were used as lead, brass, bricks, and stone, on which national edicts and records were written or engraved; or tablets of wood, wax, and ivory, skins of fishes, intestines of serpents, backs of tortoises, and the inner bark of trees for ordinary purposes. Indeed, there are but few sorts of plants that have not been used for making paper and books, and hence have arisen the terms _biblos_, _codex_, _liber_, _folium_, _tabula_, _tillura_, _philura_, _scheda_, &c., which express the several parts of the plant which were written on. The use of these was discontinued in Europe after the invention of papyrus and parchment, but they are still used in other parts of the world. The two early kinds of manufacture above alluded to must first be noticed, before we describe the later invention of making paper from cotton and linen rags, which, in the greater part of the world, has superseded all other methods of producing a material for writing on. The Egyptian papyrus was made by laying thin plates of bark, taken from the middle of the paper-rush, side by side, but close together, on a hard, smooth table: other pieces of the same size and thinness were then laid across the first at right angles; the whole was moistened with the water of the Nile, which was supposed to have some agglutinating property (though this probably resided in the plant itself), and pressure was then applied for a certain number of hours. Thus a sheet of paper was formed which required no other finishing than rubbing and polishing with a smooth stone, or with a solid glass hemisphere, and drying in the sun. This very simple process was rather a preparation of a natural paper than a manufacture--properly so called. The process adopted by the Chinese comes more legitimately under that head. The small branches of a tree resembling our mulberry-tree, are cut by them in lengths of about three feet, and boiled in an alkaline lye for the sake of loosening the inner rind or bark, which is then peeled off, and dried for use. When a sufficient quantity of bark has been thus laid up, it is again softened in water for three or four days, and the outer parts are scraped off as useless; the rest is boiled in clear lye, which is kept strongly agitated all the time, until the bark has become tender, and separates into distinct fibres. It is then placed in a pan or sieve, and washed in a running stream, being at the same time worked with the hands until it becomes a delicate and soft pulp. For the finer sorts of paper, the pulp receives a second washing in a linen bag; it is then spread out on a smooth table, and beaten with a wooden mallet