. Literature, ancient and modern, with specimens . sotia. The ten com-mandments delivered to Moses were written upon stone,and Solons laws upon wooden planks. Tables ofwood, box, and ivory, were common among theancients; when of wood, they were frequently cov-ered with wax, that people might write on them withmore ease, or blot out what they had written. Theleaves of the palm-tree were afterwards used instead ofwooden planks, and the finest and thinnest part of thebark of such trees as the lime, the ash, the maple, andthe elm. From hence comes the word liher, whichsignifies the inner bark of t
. Literature, ancient and modern, with specimens . sotia. The ten com-mandments delivered to Moses were written upon stone,and Solons laws upon wooden planks. Tables ofwood, box, and ivory, were common among theancients; when of wood, they were frequently cov-ered with wax, that people might write on them withmore ease, or blot out what they had written. Theleaves of the palm-tree were afterwards used instead ofwooden planks, and the finest and thinnest part of thebark of such trees as the lime, the ash, the maple, andthe elm. From hence comes the word liher, whichsignifies the inner bark of the trees ; and as these wererolled up, in order to be easily portable, they were INTRODUCTION. called volumen, or volume — a name afteiwards givento the like rolls of paper or parchment. The art of making paper from fibrous matter, reduced to a pulp in water, which is the present method,appears to have been discovered by the Chinese aboutthe year 95 A. D. Previously to this time, ihey wroteon the inner bark of the bamboo, with a style Egyptian Iapijrus. Before the invention of paper, the Egyptian papyrtcs,from which our modern paper derives its name, hadtaken the place of other materials for writing. Thiswas made from a reedy plant, bearing the above name:for this purpose, the thin, concentric coats, or pelliclesthat surround the triangular stock of the plant, wereemployed, those nearest the centre being considered thebest and finest. These were cut into strips of a certainlength, and placed side by side, in a layer, on a board ;another layer of the same material was then pasted 10 LITERATURE. over it crosswise, so as to form a sheet of convenientthickness. After being pressed and dried in the sun,this was polished with a shell, or other hard andsmooth substance. A number of these sheets, some-times as many as twenty, were placed together, toform a scapiis, or roll. The breadth of the roll wasdetermined by the length of the slips taken from theplant, the broadest b
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Keywords: ., bookauthorgoodrichsamuelgsamuel, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1840
