Although we get our word “paper” from “papyrus,” this latter was not a paper at all. The essential characteristic of a true paper is the matting or felting together of small fibres, whether these be of wood, linen, or other substance. Papyrus was the inner bark of a beautiful reed, which grows along the banks of the Nile, and from a very remote period strips of this bark were laid over each other at right angles, fixed together with gum, or perhaps a little Nile mud, and used for writing upon with a soft pen. The right-angular lines of the two layers of papyrus bark can easily be seen on any papyrus MS. Papyrus is not a good substance for writing upon; it is at first too soft, and then it gets brittle and is apt to crumble away. By sticking successive strips of papyrus to each other ancient scribes produced long rolls of manuscript, and from these rolls we derive many of the book terms which are still in use. The most obvious is “volume,” which is from “volvere,” “to roll up”; and “Bible” comes from the Greek “βυβλοἱ,” meaning the inner bark of papyrus. In China the possibility of making thin feltings with silk fibre was probably known at a very remote period, and it is likely enough that from some such unsatisfactory production the better and usable kinds made of vegetable fibres evolved itself. We cannot now say when the possibility of felting together fibres of wood or grass first became known to the Chinese, but it was certainly well understood in the fifth or sixth centuries, because specimens of it still exist. In the middle of the eighth century, in 751 A.D., there were certain tribal disturbances on the Chinese frontier of Persia, and one of the combatants called in the help of the Chinese. These, however, suffered defeat at the hands of the Arab governor of Samarkand, who brought back some Chinese prisoners to his town. These men were acquainted with the Chinese methods of making paper. From these Chinese prisoners the Arabs and their friends the Persians learnt the art of paper-making with vegetable fibres, but the supply in this particular very soon gave out, and because enough suitable fibres were difficult to get they mixed them with pulped rags. Eventually the Samarkand paper-makers used rags only, and these they easily got in sufficient quantities from old linen clothes, and also the mummy wrappings from Egypt were made use of in the same way. From the Arabs the knowledge of paper-making passed rapidly to Europe, and by the middle of the tenth century it had entirely superseded the use of papyrus.