The linen paper, so called, came in use at a much later period, but there is great disagreement among authorities as to the date. Meerman, the author of a learned book on the origin of printing, offered a reward for the earliest manuscript on linen paper, which, he decided, could not have been used in Europe before 1270. Montfaucon, a learned antiquary, says that he could find no book nor leaf of linen paper of earlier date, but he thinks that it was known and used in Europe to a limited extent before 1270. Gibbon, citing the authority of Arabian historians, says that a linen paper was made in Samarcand in the eighth century, and leaves his reader to form the inference that not long after, paper found its way to Europe. Casiri, a Spanish author, who made a catalogue of the Arabian manuscripts in the Escurial, says that in this collection are many old manuscripts of the twelfth century on linen paper, including one of the year 1100. But we are not told that this paper was made in Spain; it may have been brought from the East. Tiraboschi, an Italian historian, says that linen paper is the invention of an Italian, Pace de Fabiano of Treviso, who flourished about the middle of the fourteenth century. But Peter Mauritius, abbot of a French monastery at Cluny, in a treatise written by him in 1120 against the Jews, says, “The books we read every day are made of the skins of sheep, goats and calves [parchment], of oriental plants [papyrus], or of the scrapings of old rags, or of any other compacted refuse material.”[60] It would be a hopeless task to attempt to gather from these discordant [p139] statements a satisfactory explanation of the origin or of the introduction of paper in Europe. The modern paper-maker, who produces paper pulp from mixtures in variable proportions of all kinds of textile rubbish, will doubt the ability of any antiquary to distinguish linen from cotton paper, especially when Tiraboschi admits that cotton paper was made in Italy during the fourteenth century so closely resembling linen paper that only a paper-maker could perceive the difference. The microscope that enables the educated investigator to detect the characteristic features of every kind of vegetable fibre is really the only safe test[61] for determining the constituents of paper; but it does not appear that this instrument was ever used by the authors who have undertaken to discriminate between linen and cotton paper. The explanation of these contradictory statements must be sought in another quarter.