"(1) The oldest of the Eastern Turkestani papers, dating from the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., are made of a mixture of raw fibres of the bast of various dicotyledonous plants. From these fibres the half-stuff for the paper was made by means of a rude mechanical process. "(2) Similar papers, made of a mixture of raw fibres, are also found belonging to the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries. But in this period there also occur papers which are made of a mixture of rudely pounded rags and of raw fibres extracted by maceration. "(3) In the same period papers make their appearance in which special methods are used to render them capable of being written on, viz., coating with gypsum and sizing with starch or with a gelatine extracted from lichen. "(4) In the seventh and eighth centuries both kinds of papers are of equal frequency, those made of the raw fibre of various dicotyledonous plants and those made of a mixture of rags and raw fibres. In this period the method of extracting the raw fibre is found to improve from a rude stamping to maceration; but that of preparing the rags remains a rude stamping, and in the half-stuff thus produced from rags it is easy to distinguish the raw fibre from the crushed and broken fibre of the rags. "(5) The old Eastern Turkestani (Chinese) paper can be distinguished from the old Arab paper, not only by the raw fibres which accompany the rag fibres, but also by the far-reaching destruction of the latter. "(6) The previous researches of Professor Karabacek and the author had shown that the invention of rag paper was not made in Europe by Germans or Italians about the turn of the fourteenth century, but that the Arabs knew its preparation as early as the end of the eighth century. "The present researches now further show that the beginnings of the preparation of rag paper can be traced to the Chinese in the fifth or fourth centuries, or even earlier. "The Chinese method of preparing rag paper never progressed beyond its initial low stage. It was the Arabs who, having been initiated into the art by the Chinese, improved the method of preparing it, and carried it to that stage of perfection in which it was received from them by the civilised peoples of Europe in the mediæval ages. "(7) The author has shown that the process of sizing the paper with starch in order to improve it was already known to the Arabs in the eighth century. In the fourteenth century the knowledge of it was lost, animal glue being substituted in the place of starch, till finally in the nineteenth century, along with the introduction of paper machines, the old process was resuscitated. But the invention of it was due to the Chinese. The oldest Eastern Turkestani paper which is sized with starch belongs to the eighth century.