A.D. 1300, many of which were written on paper. The documents were closely examined in 1894 by these experts, at the request of the owner, the Archduke Rainer of Austria.

Researches of a later date resulted in the discovery of some further interesting documents which appear to establish with some degree of certainty the approximate date at which pure rag paper, that is, paper made entirely from rag, was manufactured.

Chinese documents dated A.D. 768-786, which have been reported upon by Dr. Hoernle, and others dated A.D. 781-782-787, reported upon by Dr. Stein as recently as 1901, appear to show what materials were used by the Chinese paper-makers in Western Turkestan. The manuscripts mentioned were dug out from the sand-buried site of Dandan Uilig, in Eastern Turkestan.

Professor Wiesner found that all the papers of the Rainer collection were made of linen rag, with an occasional trace of cotton, probably added accidentally. The earliest dated paper was a letter A.D. 874, but two documents, which from other reasons could be identified as belonging to A.D. 792, proved that at the end of the eighth century the Arabs understood the art of making linen paper on network moulds, and further that they added starch for the purpose of sizing and loading the paper.

Professor Karabacek advances some ingenious explanations as to the origin of the idea that raw cotton was first used for paper-making, and he suggests that the legend owes its origin to a misunderstanding of terms. In mediæval times paper was known as Charta bombycina, and sometimes as Charta Damascena, the latter from its place of origin.

Paper was also made in Bambyce, and a natural confusion arose between the terms, since the word bombyx was used as a name for cotton, and the paper commonly in use suggested that material to the mind of the observer, and the name became corrupted to bombycina.

The suggestions of Professor Karabacek, together with the microscopical investigations of Dr. Wiesner, appear to show that paper made entirely from raw cotton fibre was not known.

Invention of Rag Paper.—Dr. Hoernle, in discussing this question, points out that, taking A.D. 751 as the date when the Arabs learnt the art of paper-making, and A.D. 792 as the date when paper made entirely of linen rag was produced, the date of the invention of rag paper must lie between these two dates. The documents discovered in Eastern Turkestan and bearing the dates mentioned, which papers fill up the gap between the years A.D. 751 and A.D. 792, were found to contain certain raw fibres, such as China grass, mulberry, laurel, as the main constituents, and macerated flax and hemp rags as the minor constituents.

The addition and substitution of rag evidently increased in course of time, and since the improvement thus effected soon became an obvious and established fact, the raw fibres were omitted. Hence the credit of the manufacture of pure rag paper would be given to the people of Samarkand, the date being between the years A.D. 760 and A.D. 792; and further the constitution of such paper has been shown by Dr. Wiesner to be linen, and not cotton, as commonly stated.

These researches are of such interest that we quote Professor Hoernle's translation of the summary of the principal results of Dr. Wiesner's examination of the Eastern Turkestani papers so recently discovered:—

“Taking into account the dates assigned to the papers on palæographic grounds, the following conclusions may be drawn from the examination of their material:—

“(1) The oldest of the Eastern Turkestani papers, dating from the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., are made of a mixture of raw fibres of the bast of various dicotyledonous plants. From these fibres the half-stuff for the paper was made by means of a rude mechanical process.

“(2) Similar papers, made of a mixture of raw fibres, are also found belonging to the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries. But in this period there also occur papers which are made of a mixture of rudely pounded rags and of raw fibres extracted by maceration.

“(3) In the same period papers make their appearance in which special methods are used to render them capable of being written on, viz., coating with gypsum and sizing with starch or with a gelatine extracted from lichen.

“(4) In the seventh and eighth centuries both kinds of papers are of equal frequency, those made of the raw fibre of various dicotyledonous plants and those made of a mixture of rags and raw fibres. In this period the method of extracting the raw fibre is found to improve from a rude stamping to maceration; but that of preparing the rags remains a rude stamping, and in the half-stuff thus produced from rags it is easy to distinguish the raw fibre from the crushed and broken fibre of the rags.

“(5) The old Eastern Turkestani (Chinese) paper can be distinguished from the old Arab paper, not only by the raw fibres which accompany the rag fibres, but also by the far-reaching destruction of the latter.

“(6) The previous researches of Professor Karabacek and the author had shown that the invention of rag paper was not made in Europe by Germans or Italians about the turn of the fourteenth century, but that the Arabs knew its preparation as early as the end of the eighth century.

“The present researches now further show that the beginnings of the preparation of rag paper can be traced to the Chinese in the fifth or fourth centuries, or even earlier.

“The Chinese method of preparing rag paper never progressed beyond its initial low stage. It was the Arabs who, having been initiated into the art by the Chinese, improved the method of preparing it, and carried it to that stage of perfection in which it was received from them by the civilised peoples of Europe in the mediæval ages.

“(7) The author has shown that the process of sizing the paper with starch in order to improve it was already known to the Arabs in the eighth century. In the fourteenth century the knowledge of it was lost, animal glue being substituted in the place of starch, till finally in the nineteenth century, along with the introduction of paper machines, the old process was resuscitated. But the invention of it was due to the Chinese. The oldest Eastern Turkestani paper which is sized with starch belongs to the eighth century.

“(8) The Chinese were not only the inventors of felted paper and the imitators of rag paper—though in the preparation of the latter they made use of rags only as a surrogate by the side of raw fibres—but they must also be credited with being the forerunners of the modern method of preparing ‘cellulose paper.’ For their very ancient practice of extracting the fibre from the bark and other parts of plants by means of maceration is in principle identical with the modern method of extracting ‘cellulose’ by means of certain chemical processes.”

Fig. 2.—An Early Paper Mill (from “Kulturhistorisches Bilderbuch,” A.D. 1564).

Paper-making in Europe.—The introduction of the art into Europe seems to have taken place early in the eleventh century, when the Moors manufactured paper at Toledo. The early authorities who have studied this subject express the opinion that the paper produced in Europe at this time was made from cotton rags and from raw cotton, but, in