THE PAPER-MAKER.

The art of making paper, as at present practised, is not of a very ancient date ; paper made of linen rags appears to have been first
used in Europe towards the beginning of the thirteenth century, but of its origin nothing can with certainty be affirmed.

The ancients, as substitutes for paper, had recourse successively to palm-tree leaves, to table books, of wax, ivory, and lead, to linen and cotton cloths, to the intestines or skins of different animals, and to the inner bark of plants. In seme places and ages they have even written on the skins of fishes ; on the intestines of serpents, and in others, on the backs of tortoises. There are few plants but have, at some time, been used for paper or books, and hence the several terms bibels, codex, liber, folium, tabula, &c. which express the different parts on which they were written, and though in Europe all thtse disappeared upon the introduction of the papyrus and parchments, yet in some other countries the use of them remains to this day. In Ceylon, for instance, they write on the leaves of the tallipot ; and the Bramin, MSS. in the Tulinga language, sent to Oxford from Fort St. George, are written on leaves of
plants.

The paper which had been for a long time used by the Romans and Greeks, was made of the bark of an aquatic plant called papyrus, whence the name paper. The internal parts of the bark of this plant, were the only ones that were made into paper, and the manner of the manufacture was as follows :— Strips or leaves of every length that could be obtained being laid upon a table, other strips were placed across and pasted to them by means of water and a press, so that this paper was a texture of several strips; and it even appears that in the time of the Emperor Claudius, the Romans made paper of these layers. The Roman paper received a size as well as ours, which was prepared with flour of wheat diluted with boiling water, on which were thrown some drops of vinegar ; or crumbs of leavened bread diluted with boiling water, and passed through a bolting-cloth, being afterwards beaten with a hammer.

Paper made in this manner with the bark o£ the Egyptian plant, was that which was chiefly used till the tenth century, when cotton
was used for making paper by pounding it and reducing it to a pulp. This method, known in China some ages before, appeared at last in the empire of the East, yet we are without any certain knowledge of the author, or the time and place of this invention.

Father Montfaucon says, that cottonr paper began to be used in the empire of the East about the ninth century. There are several
Greek manuscripts, both on parchment and cotton-paper, that bear the date of the time in which they were written ; but the greatest part are without date. The most ancient manuscript on cotton-paper with a date, is that in the library of the king of France, numbered 2,889, written in 1050; another in the emperor's library dated 1095. Chinese paper is of various kinds : some is made of the bark of trees, especially the mulberry-tree and the elm, but chiefly of the bamboo and cotton-tree. In fact, almost each province has its several sorts of paper.

The inventor of the linen-rag paper, whoever he was, is entitled to the gratitude of posterity, who are enjoying the advantages of
the discovery. The cotton-paper, though an improvement, was but a rude and coarse article, unfit for any of the nice purposes to
which paper is now applied. The perfection of the art of paper-making consisted in finding a material which could be procured in
sufficient quantities, and would be easy of preparation. Such paper is now in use, of which we shall endeavour to describe the manufacture.

Linen, such as our shirts are made of, is spun from flax which grows in the,fields ; and from linen rags, that is, from shirts and other
articles of dress when worn thread-bare, fine white paper is manufactured : of course, every piece of rag, however small, should be
preserved and not thrown into the fire, and latterly, indeed, from the increased use of calico as an article of clothing, cotton rags are become of almost as much importance as linen rags, and should have equal care devoted to their preservation.

The first thing to be done towards the formation of paper, is to pat the rags into a machine or cylinder formed of wire, which is
made to turn round with great velocity to whirl out the dust; they are then sorted according to their different qualities; after which, they are put into a large cistern or trough, perforated with holes, through which a stream of clear water constantly flows. ln this cistern is placed a cylinder about two feet long, set thick with rows of iron spikes. At the bottom of the trough there are corresponding rows of spikes. The cylinder is made to whirl round with inconceivable rapidity, and with the iron teeth rends and
tears the cloth to atoms, till, with the assistance of the water, it is reduced to a thin pulp. By the same process all the impurities are
cleared away, and it is restored to its original whiteness. This fine pulp is next put into a copper of warm water, and here it becomes the substance of paper and ready for the mould ; for which purpose it is conveyed to the vat. This vat is made of wood, generally about five feet broad, and two or three feet in depth. It is kept to a proper temperature by means of a charcoal fire.

The mould which the Paper-Maker has in his hand is composed of many wires set in a frame close together, and of another moveable frame equal in size to the sheet of paper to be made. These wires are disposed in the shape of the figure which is discovered in a sheet of paper when we hold it up to the light.

The wotkman holds the frame in both his hands, plunges it horizontally into the tub, and takes it up quickly; the water runs away
between the wires, and there remains nothing but the beaten pulp, in a thin coat, which forms the sheet of paper.

Another person,: called the coucher, receives the mould and places the sheet of paper on a felt or wooden cloth, during which the workman makes aaother sheet. They proceed in this manner, laying alternately a sheet and a felt, till they have made six quires of paper, whlich are called a post. When the last sheet of the post is covered with the last felt the workmen employed about the vat, unite and submit the whole heap to the action of the press, which is on the Paper-Maker's right hand. After this operation, another
person separates the sheets of paper from the felts, laying them in a heap ; and several of these heaps collected together are again put under the press. They are turned and pressed several times, and then the sheets are hung up three or four together on lines to dry.

The paper is now to be sized, because in its present state it will not bear the ink. The size is made of shreds and parings collected
from the tanners, curriers, and parchment-makers; and, immediately before the operation, a certain quantity of alum is added to.it. The workman then takes a handful of the sheets, smoothed and rendered as supple as possible, and dips them into the vessel containing the size ; and when he has finished ten or a dozen of these handfulls, they are submitted to the action of the press; the superfluous size is carried back to the vessel by means of a small pipe. The paper is now to be hung sheet by sheet on lines to dry.

When the paper is sufficiently dry, it is carried to the finishing room, where it is pressed, selected, examined, folded, made up into quires, and finally into reams. It is here submitted twice to the press ; first when it is at its full size, and secondly after it is folded.

Every quire of paper consists of twenty- four or twenty-five sheets ; the larger number refers to paper made use of in printing : and
each ream contains twenty quires.

In the manufacture many sheets are damaged ; these, in the sorting room, are put together, and two of the worst quires, containing only about twenty sheets, are placed on the outsides of the ream, called outside quires. The reams are tied up in wrappers made of the settling of the vat, and they are then fit for sale.

Some paper is made smooth and glossy like satin, by means of hot plates; this is called hot-pressing. The process of paper- making takes about three weeks.

Pasteboard is made in a similar way to that of paper, and when it is wanted very thick, it is made by having sheets pasted one upon
another. There is, however, a kind of thick paper, called millboard, used for covers of books, which is made at once: it is omposed, like brown papers, of very coarse rags, old ropes, &c;

Blotting paper, and paper used for filtering fluids, is paper not sized, into which, therefore, the ink readily sinks. The best filtering paper is made of woollen rags, chosen for the purpose.

Wove or woven paper is made in models, the wires of which are exceedingly fine, of equal thickness, and woven or latticed one
within another. The marks, therefore, of these are easily pressed out so as to be scarcely visible.

The grestest modern improvement in paper- making, is the bleaching of the rags. This enables the manufacturer to produce the finest paper in point of colour from almost any old rags. He has therefore only to find such materials as will make a paper of a strong texture and a fine even surface, knowing that he can produce colour at pleasure. Bleaching is conducted by different methods, either by bleaching the rags immediately after they are sorted, bleaching them in the half-stuff, that is, after they have been once ground in the washing engine, or while they are in the engine. For the first of these hiethods Mr. Campbell obtained a patent in 1792. It consists in having a chamber which is air-tight, into which the rags must be introduced, and with proper retorts, containing a mixture of manganese, sea-salt, and sulphuric-acid, heated to a certain extent : a gas will be discharged from the mixture, which destroys all the colour that the rags may contain.

Another important alteration has been recently made in the art of paper-making, by the adoption of macbineiy for fabricating it from the pulp, and at one operation pressing it between the felts, and rendering it fit for the second pressure, by which an immense
saving of labour is made, and the quality of the paper improved. Messrs. Fourdriniers have a patent for these machines, of which they have erected a great number in different parts of the kingdom.

Paper has been occasionally made of straw, other materials not commonly in use, and Mr, Koop, in 1802, obtained a patent for
making straw-paper, but we have not heard that the use of this article is become common.

Paper is subject to heavy excise duties, the particulars of which we have not room to enumerate ; and the manufacturer of paper must also take out an annual license.

The manufacture of paper is so curious, and so well worth the attention of young persons, that we recommend them to take some pains to obtain a sight of the whole process, which may easily be done wherever there are paper-mills.