The scribes made all the _writing materials_: tablets, vellum, ink, pens. We have shown that _wax tablets_ were used in teaching writing. They were also used in teaching reading, and for such temporary purposes as taking notes of a sermon or lecture.[282] Adamnan writing in the seventh century mentions that he inscribed certain writings first on wax tablets and afterwards on vellum.[283] For memoranda a _slate and pencil_ were also used, as we learn from the story of Cinnfaela the Learned. When he was at the school of Tuaim Drecain, now Tom Regan in Co. Cavan, he wrote down roughly on slates what he heard during the day, but at night he transferred the entries into a vellum book.[284] These tablets were made of long strips of wood and covered with beeswax. In shape they were sometimes like short swords. The schools prepared their own vellum or parchment from the skins of goats, sheep, and calves. This parchment was usually finely polished, but sometimes it was hard and not well cleaned. The parchment prepared by the Irish scribes was much thicker than that used by the French from the seventh to the tenth century: thus we have an additional means whereby we can identify Irish MSS. on the Continent.[285] The ink was made of carbon. It has been found to resist all the chemical tests for iron. The blackness of the ink even at the present day is quite remarkable. The writing of the _Book of Armagh_, for instance, is as black as if it were written yesterday.[286] The ink was very likely made of lampblack, or possibly of fish bone black.[287] When we come to describe the illuminated MSS. which remain to attest the artistic skill of the monastic scribes we shall see that not only were they experts at making a superior quality of ink but, what is still more remarkable, they manufactured a large variety of pigments which even at the present day have lost little of their original brilliancy after a lapse of one thousand years. PENS: The beauty, neatness, and perfect uniformity of the handwriting in old Irish MSS. have led some antiquarians to express an opinion that the scribes used metal pens; but such an opinion is quite untenable. Keller has shown that the pens were made from the quills of geese, swans, crows, and other birds.[288] This is also the opinion of Miss Stokes.[289] One of the pictures in the _Book of Kells_ confirms this view. This is a picture representing St. John the Evangelist engaged in writing the Gospel. He holds a pen in his hand the feather of which can be clearly detected.[290] The inkstand is also represented by a slender conical cup fastened to the corner of the chair on which he is sitting or upon a stick stuck in the ground. The old scribes sometimes wrote with the book resting upon the knees using a flat board for support. But when writing became more elaborate and ornamental a desk was used and, if necessary, a maulstick to support the wrist.[291] THE SCRIBE: