第102章

SOME GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ABOUT PAPER-MAKING MATERIALS--PROBABILITIES AS TO THE FUTURE OF THE PUBLIC RECORDS--ESTIMATION OF SUCH MATTERSBY THE LATE POPE--INVENTION OF WOOD-PULP PAPER--ITS LASTING QUALITIES--THE THREE KINDS OF SUCHPAPER DEFINED--DISCUSSION OF THE SUBJECT OF FUNGI IN PAPER BY GLYDE--SOME TESTS TO ASCERTAINTHE MATERIAL OF WHICH PAPER IS COMPOSED-TESTS AS TO SIZING AND THE DETERMINATION OF THEDIRECTION OF THE GRAIN--ABSORBING POWERS OF BLOTTING PAPER--TESTS FOR GROUND WOOD--NEW MODE OF ANALYSTS--WHEN THE FIRST "SAFETY" PAPER WAS INVENTED--THE MANY KINDS OF "SAFETY"PAPER AND PROCESSES IN THEIR MANUFACTURE-CHRONOLOGICAL REVIEW COVERING THIS SUBJECT-SURVEY OF THE VARIOUS PROCESSES IN THE TREATMENTAND USE OF "SAFETY" PAPER--ONLY THREE CHEMICAL "SAFETY" PAPERS NOW ON THE MARKET-WHY IT IS POSSIBLE TO RAISE SOME MONETARY INSTRUMENTS.

PAPER manufacturers have tried all the pulp-making substances. This statement to the unlearned must seem curious, because in the very early times they were content with a single material and that did not even require to be first made into the form of pulp.

When the supply of papyrus failed, it was rags which they substituted. By the simplest processes they produced a paper with which our best cannot compare.

In some countries great care is exercised in selecting the quality of paper for official use, in others none at all.

What will be the state of our archives a few hundred years hence, if they be not continually recopied?

Some of the printed paper rots even more quickly than written.

The late Pope at one time invited many of the savants, chemists and librarians of Europe, to meet at Einsiedlen Abbey in Switzerland. He requested that the subject of their discussions should be both ink and paper. He volunteered the information, already known to the initiated, that the records of this generation in his custody and under his control were fast disappearing and unless the writing materials were much improved he estimated that they would entirely disappear. It is stated that at this meeting the Pope's representative submitted a number of documents from the Vatican archives which are scarcely decipherable though dated in the nineteenth century. In a few of those of dates later than 1873 the paper was so tender that unless handled with exceptional care, it would break in pieces like scorched paper.

These conditions are in line with many of those which prevail with few exceptions in every country, town or hamlet.

A contributory cause as we know is a class of poor and cheap inks now in almost universal use. The other is the so-called "modern" or wood-pulp paper in general vogue.

Reaumur, as already stated, back in 1719 suggested from information gathered in examinations of wasps' nests, that a paper might be manufactured from wood. This idea does not appear to have been acted upon until many years later, although in the interim inventors were exhausting their ingenuity in the selection of fibrous materials from which paper might be manufactured.

The successful introduction of wood as a substitute for or with rags in paper manufacture until about 1870 was of slow growth; since which time vast quantities have been employed. In this country alone millions of tons of raw material are being imported to say nothing of home products.

Its value in the cause of progress of some arts which contribute greatly to our comfort and civilization cannot be overestimated, but nevertheless the wood paper is bound to disintegrate and decay, and the time not very far distant either. Hence, its use for records of any kind is always to be condemned.

There are three classes of wood pulp; mechanical wood, soda process, and the sulphite. The first or mechanical wood is a German invention of 1844, where the logs after being cut up into proper blocks, were then ground against a moving millstone against which they were pressed and with the aid of flowing water reduced to a pulpy form. This pulp was transported into suitable tanks and then pumped to the "beaters."The soda process wood and sulphite wood pulp are both made by chemical processes. The first was invented by Meliner in 1865. The preparation of pulp by this process consists briefly in first cutting up the logs into suitable sections and throwing them into a chipping machine. The chips are then introduced into tanks containing a strong solution of caustic soda and boiled under pressure.

The sulphite process is substantially the same except that the chips are thrown into what are called digesters and fed with the chemicals which form an acid sulphite. The real inventor of this latter process is not known.

The chemicals employed in both of these processes compel a separation of the resinous matters from the cell tissues or cellulose. These products are then treated in the manufacturing of paper with few variations, the same as the ordinary rag pulp.

These now perfected processes are the results of long and continuing experimentations made by many inventors.

The following paper was read before the London Society of Arts by Mr. Alfred Glyde, in May, 1850, and is equally applicable to some of the wood paper of the present day:

"Owing to the imperfections formerly existing in the microscope, little was known of the real nature of the plants called fungi until within the last few years, but since the improvements in that instrument the subject of the development, growth, and offices of the fungi has received much attention.