Parchment, or the skins of beasts, dressed and prepared in a manner rendering them fit for writing upon, appears to have been employed at a very early period. Diodorus Siculus informs us, that the Persians of old wrote all their records on skins; and Herodotus also alludes to sheep skins, and goat skins, as in general use among the Ionians about 440 years before the Christian Era. The word Parchment is a corruption of the Latin _Pergamena_, from _Pergamus_, which some allege to have been the place of its invention. But it is very probable that in the time of Eumenes, who was king of Pergamus, (about 200 years before Christ,) the circumstance of increased consumption merely occasioned the discovery of a better method of dressing the skins; from which fact alone, and perhaps with sufficient reason, the origin of the present term was derived. Eumenes, about that period, appears to have endeavoured to form a library at Pergamus, which should surpass that of Ptolemy Philadelphus at Alexandria, and in so doing enraged Ptolemy to that degree, that he immediately prohibited any further exportation from Egypt, of the papyrus which by that time was coming into very general use, and thus effectually put a stop to Eumenes’ emulation in that particular. It may be, however, that this prohibition was not solely occasioned by jealousy, but by Ptolemy’s fearing that his dominions, which were so much improved in arts, sciences, and civilization, since the discovery and adoption of the papyrus, (of which we shall presently speak), would be again reduced to a state of ignorance for want of it; the plant sometimes failing in unfavourable weather, while the supply invariably proved unequal to the demand. The people of Pergamus, therefore, were obliged to devise other means, and the improved manufacture of parchment would seem to have been the result. But, that Eumenes on this occasion invented the art of making parchment is exceedingly dubious; for in the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and other parts of Scripture, we find mention made of rolls of writing: in all probability rolls of parchment. The manner of reading such rolls may be gathered from a passage extracted from Hartley’s “Travels in Greece,” which serves also to elucidate the peculiar scriptural expression of their being “written within and without.” You began, (says he) to read by unfolding, and you continued to read and to unfold, till, at last, you arrived at the stick to which the roll was attached; then you turned the parchment round, and continued to read on the other side of the roll, folding it gradually up until you completed the writing, thus were they “written within and without.”