The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous ... - Cd3wd.com

LINEN AND COTTON PAPER. 409
form of which are shown in Plate IX. Fig. 18. From the ap-
pearance of this paper, it is probable that the form or mould
may perhaps have been made of thin rods of cane or some
other vegetable. These rods, however, may have been metal-
lic. They were placed so close, that of the water-lines pro-
duced by them 17 may be counted in the space of an inch, the
water-lines at right angles to these being one inch and a quar-
ter apart.
The preceding facts coincide with the opinion long ago ex-
pressed by Prideaux, who concluded that linen paper was an
Eastern invention, because '• most of the old MSS. in Arabic
and other oriental languages are written on this sort of paper,"
and that it was first introduced into Europe by the Saracens of
Spain*.
A few observations, by way of concluding this part of the
subject, may here be properly bestowed upon the material with
which the wasp-family construct their nests.
The wasp is a j^aper-maker, and a most perfect and inteUi-
gent one. While mankind were arriving, by slow degrees, at
the art of fabricating this valuable substance, the wasp was
making it before their eyes, by very much the same process as
that by which human hands now manufacture it with the
best aid of chemistry and machinery. While some nations
carved their records on wood, and stone, and brass, and leaden
tablets,—others, more advanced, wrote with a style on wax,—
others employed the inner bark of trees, and others the skins of
animals rudely prepared,—the wasp was manufacturing a firm
and durable paper. Even when the papyrus was rendered more
fit, by a process of art, for the transmission of ideas in writing.
The paper of the papyrus was formed of the leaves of the plant,
dried, pressed, and polished ; the wasp alone knew koto to
reduce vegetable fibres to a pulp, and then vnite them by a
size or glue, spreading the substance out into a smooth and
delicate leaf. This is exactly the process of paper-making. It
would seem that the wasp knows, as the modern paper-makers
* Old and New Testament connected, Part I. chapter 7. p. 393, 3rd edition,
folio.
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