yellow, and thickens on the surface. Some make their abundant meal at the foot of the tree which supplies it; others carry their full vessels home to their children."
Our reader will not question the utility of writing-paper, though he may possibly deem this substance of inferior importance to either bread, cabbage, or milk. The poets and sages of antiquity did not write their immortal works upon "foolscap," but upon natural paper, furnished by the papyrus—a reed-like plant, growing in the waters of the Nile. The stem of this wonderful plant is triangular, and shoots up gracefully to the height of some fifteen or twenty feet, its slender top bearing a tuft of thread-like leaves.
The inner bark of the stem was divided into thin plates or pellicles, each as large as the plant would admit. These plates, which were necessarily very narrow, were then laid side by side, with their edges touching, on a smooth hard surface; and then other pieces were laid across them, so as to form a sheet of many pieces, which required adhesion to become one united substance. The whole was then moistened with Nile water, and subjected to pressure; and in this manner the sheet was formed, for the glutinous sap contained in the plant sufficed to cement the various pieces together. The plates procured from the central portions of the stem were the most valuable, and were used to form varieties of paper equivalent to our "cream-
