Parchment--Pergamena, so called long after the time of its first use, from Pergamus, a city of Mysia, where the manufacture was improved and carried on to a great extent, is mentioned by Herodotus and Ctesias as a material which had been from time immemorial used for books: it has proved to be of all others, except that abovementioned, the most durable. The greater part of all manuscripts that are of higher antiquity than the sixth century are on parchment; as well as, generally, all carefully written and curiously decorated manuscripts of later ages. The palimpsests are usually parchments: "It often happened," says Montfaucon, "that from the scarcity of parchment, the copyists, having erased the writing of ancient books, wrote upon them anew: these rewritten parchments were called palimpsests--scraped a second time, and often the ancient work was one of far greater value than that to which it gave place: this we have on many occasions had opportunity to observe in the MSS. of the king's library, and in those of Italy. In some of these rescripts, the first writing is so much obliterated as to be scarcely perceptible; while in others, though not without much labour, it may still be read." The practice, still followed in the east, of writing upon the leaves of trees, was common in the remotest ages. The leaves of the mallow or of the palm were most used for this purpose: they were sometimes wrought together into larger surfaces; but it is probable that this fragile and inconvenient material was only employed for ordinary purposes of business, letter-writing, or the instruction of children. The inner bark of the linden or teil tree, and perhaps of some others, railed by the Romans _liber_, by the Greeks _biblos,_[4] was so generally used as a material for writing as to have given its name to a book in both languages. Tables of solid wood called _codices_, whence the term _codex_ for a manuscript on any material, has passed into common use, were also employed, but chiefly for legal documents, on which account a system of laws came to be called a code. Leaves or tablets of lead or ivory are frequently mentioned by ancient authors as in common use for writing. But no material or preparation seems to have been so frequently employed on ordinary occasions as tablets covered with a thin coat of coloured wax, which was readily removed by an iron needle, called a _style_; and from which the writing was as readily effaced by the blunt end of the same instrument. [4] The word biblos or byblos, was afterwards almost appropriated to books written upon the paper of Egypt.