upon land or water, that is not, more or less, made of bamboo.

Harsh as it is, they contrive to make of its young shoots, a paper much softer and smoother than any that is manufactured elsewhere, and more suitable for the Chinaman, who generally writes with a pencil.

The shoots are first thoroughly soaked iu water, and then put into a dry ditch, and covered with lime. After a few days they are taken out, cut into shreds and dried in the sun. They are next boiled in large kettles, and reduced to a pulp, by means of a pestle and mortar. In this state they are mixed with a plant which has been reduced to a glutinous substance. The goodness of the paper depends upon the right proportion of the gluten being used, and therefore this is the most delicate part of the business. The whole is then beaten together, until it becomes a liquor, and is able to be poured into a vessel. Moulds of bamboo, made the right shape and size for the paper required, are then plunged into the vessel. The glutinous substance causes the liquor to stick to the mould; it immediately becomes firm and glossy, and after being dried at a stove, is. turned out a sheet of paper.

You will, perhaps, be amused to hear that in China, many old people and children gain a livelihood by washing the ink from paper that has been written upon, and which we should think was good for nothing. After the paper has been cleaned from the ink, it is beaten up, boiled to a paste, and made into new sheets. Even then the ink is not lost, for the Chinese are so saving and ingenious, that they have a method by which they extract it from the paper, and preserve it for future use.

Chapter the Fifteenth.

THE SEDGES AND THE RUSHES.

THE sedges are very inferior to the grasses, because, as I have said before, they have neither leaves nor seeds on

loose sand of the sea shore, and on the barren side of rocks and mountains,

The most interesting plant of this order*

is the Papyrus, of which the first pa

per was made. It grows abundantly on the banks of the river Nile, and its culture was a source of great wealth to the ancient Egyptians, who exported large quantities of the paper they made from it to other countries.

The Papyrusis an aquatic plant, with twisted roots and a triangular stem, that shoots gracefully up to the height of fifteen or

* Cyperaceœ.

twenty feet, and is

surmounted by a

flowering plume. It is not only found in the Nile, but has been seen to grow in the rapid course of the Jordan; and there it was noticed to turn one of the sharp angles of its stem to the current, as if to break the violence of the waves.

Its roots used to be chewed for the sake of the pleasant juice they yielded; as the old herbal expresses it" The roots of papyrus do nourish, as may appear by the people of Egypt, which do use them to chew in their mouths, and swallow down the juice, finding therein great delight and comfort." The Egyptians also used to roast the stalks, and eat the soft pulpy matter they contain.

As I have described to you in the last chapter the manner in which paper is made from bamboo, I will now give you some idea how it was manufactured from the papyrus.

The Egyptians used first of all to divide the inner bark of the stem, with a kind of needle, into thin plates or strips, each of them as large as the plant would admit. They then cut and trimmed these strips at the edges, in order to make them fit better together. Next they laid them side by side upon a table, and placed another layer of strips at right angles upon them. In this state the whole was moistened with the