PAPER

(Gr. xdirvpo*;; Fr. papier.) A thin and flex i hie substance of varjous colours, but most commonly white, used for writing and printing on, and for various other pnr poses. It is manufactured of vegetable matter, reduced to a pulp by means of water and grinding; and is made up into sheet*, quires, and reams, each quire consisting of twenty-four sheets, and each ream of twenty quires. ^»For the chief purposes to which paper is applied in modem times the ancients had recourse to a variety of matori als; stone, tablets of wood, plates of lead, skins, parchment, linen, layers of wax, tablets of ivory, and, above all, the papyrus. The ability to write, created a nece ity for some material on which to inscribe; and all these various [s. 898]