Page:The History of Ink.djvu/40

34 To this may be added, with advantage, some instructive account of

whose history is closely connected, to a great extent, with that of writing FLUIDS.

The Egyptian, and all other oriental and ancient scribes, who wrote upon stone, employed (of course) some instrument similar in character to the chisel of our modern tomb-stone cutters, or monument letterers. So with the Greeks and Romans, writing on surfaces of wax or wood, the instruments were the graphium, or glypheion, (the graver,) and the stilus, or caelum, all of steel or iron. When the use of a dark-colored liquid or Ink was introduced, there arose a necessity for instruments of very different material, and great flexibility, in opposition to the unyielding rigidity of the tools previously employed. Then were invented the first implements properly called Pens, or really resembling what we so denominate and use. These were universally made of vegetable material, growing in the tubular form, of convenient size, as the calamus, arundo, juncus, and, in general terms, the smaller stems of various plants called "reeds" and "rushes" in English. We have already mentioned the