various animals seems originally to have been employed as a writing material; the Iliad and Odyssey are said to have been first written on the skin of serpents; but sheep and calves, goats, asses, and hogs have all furnished their tribute. The unprepared "pellis" was in Rome called "corium" after being tanned, and "membrana" when ready for writing. Pliny (XIII. 11) tells us that the town of Pergamum in Anadoli, about the year 300, under Eumenes, improved and furnished large quantities of such skins; hence their name of "Charta Pergamena," and the modern forms of "parchment." The white parchment was rarely employed, because too easily soiled and too dazzling for the eyes; it was more frequently stained with some mellow color, principally purple, as the renowned Codex Argenteus in Sweden, and numerous MSS. of the New Testament. The better to preserve it, the ancients often rubbed in some cedar-oil or stained it with the exudation of cedar-trees, from which circumstance the word "cedar" itself was often substituted for the literary part, as when Persius speaks of "et cedro digna locutus." Smoother and handsomer than paper, and capable of assuming all hues and colors, and even of being made transparent, the parchment is liable to suffer much from dampness and to have the writing effaced by brimstone. This latter facility it offers, has been the cause of fatal injury done to literature. When parchment became rare and costly, old and often invaluable writings, the most highly prized works of classic authors of antiquity, were erased to make room for psalms and copies of later church-writers. These are the so-called Taλíμeσтo or "rescripti"-from which our "rescript"-the discovery of which has brought to light so precious treasures.

Already at the time of Augustus the same end was obtained by washing off the condemned writing with a sponge; afterwards, unfortunately, pumice-stone (rasorium) became an indispensable instrument of the copyist. The greatest ingenuity and considerable knowledge of chemistry are constantly employed to recover the older writing on such parchments and this persevering zeal has met with ample reward.

CHAPTER LXXIV.

Paper-Of Cotton-Of Linen or Hemp.

THE use of cotton for the manufactory of paper, is of older date than is commonly supposed, although the first public documents on this material are a Bull of Pope Victor II. of the year 1057, and a Diploma of Henry IV. of Germany, of 1074. The Arabs are believed to have become acquainted with its use as far back as 704, in the Buchary, and brought it in the eleventh century to Spain, where water-mills were already known, and the introduction of paper-mills soon placed paper within the reach of all. About the year 1300 it found its way into France, Germany, and Italy, and is still extensively used, although it is looser and more easily broken than linen paper, and scarcely equal to the material which the Chinese prepare of rice, bamboo, or silk

cocoons.

There is good reason to believe Casiris' accidental assertion, (N. 757) that the Arabs had a MS. of aphorisms of Hippo

crates, bearing the date of 1100, on linen, and were thus the first also who made paper of linen or hemp, at once the cheapest and the best material known for writing and printing. To have some kind of paper, of cotton, hemp, or linen, became an indispensable preparation at the time of the invention of the art of printing; it affected, at the same time, permanently the mode of writing, by substituting free, easy, and connected letters, on a smooth, clear surface, for the deep, angular painting on parchments. The oldest document on linen paper is probably a copy of the Fueros of Valencia, granted in 1251, by John the Conqueror; the paper was of Arabic manufacture. The material on which the Articles of Peace between Ildefonz II., of Aragon, and Alfonz IV., of Castile, were written, in 1178, at Barcelona, is doubtful. France has, in a letter of Joinville to St. Louis, a document on linen or hemp, as old as the year 1270, whilst in Germany an edict, issued by Frederick II., in 1243, is considered the oldest of the kind.