Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/149

Rh statements a satisfactory explanation of the origin or of the introduction of paper in Europe.

The modern paper-maker, who produces paper pulp from mixtures in variable proportions of all kinds of textile rubbish, will doubt the ability of any antiquary to distinguish linen from cotton paper, especially when Tiraboschi admits that cotton paper was made in Italy during the fourteenth century so closely resembling linen paper that only a paper-maker could perceive the difference. The microscope that enables the educated investigator to detect the characteristic features of every kind of vegetable fibre is really the only safe test for determining the constituents of paper; but it does not appear that this instrument was ever used by the authors who have undertaken to discriminate between linen and cotton paper. The explanation of these contradictory statements must be sought in another quarter. The peculiarities of the so-called linen and cotton papers are due more to their distinct methods of manufacture than to the material used. The earliest notice of the manufacture of paper in Europe clearly specifies the practice of two unlike methods. We are told that, in the year 1085, a paper-mill at Toledo, which had been operated by the Moors, passed into the hands of Christians, probably Spaniards, who made great improvements in the manufacture. The Moors made paper pulp by grinding the raw cotton, a process which hastened the work, but it shortened and weakened the fibres, making a paper that was tender and woolly. The Spaniards stamped the cotton and rags into a pulp, by pestles or stamps driven by water power, a method which preserved the long fibres that gave the fabric its strength. This paper, now known as linen paper, was then known as parchment cloth. The cotton paper of the antiquarians is, apparently, the paper that had its fibres cut by grinding; the linen paper was the paper made from pulp that had been beaten.