Philosophical transactions, Vol. L. Part I. For the year 1757. · Various
VIII.
Some pieces of fine paper, coloured red on one side, and black on the other, found upon the breast of a skeleton. Signor Paderni told me, that they had been viewed with great admiration by such of the virtuosi, as he had shewn them to; and that their admiration proceeded from those fragments appearing not to be of the _charta papyracea_, but of that of silk, cotton, or linen. And indeed, if they should prove to have been made of any of the materials last mentioned, it would contradict the generally received opinion (according to [46]Montfaucon), that paper of silk or cotton, denoted by the common appellation of _charta bombycina_, was first found out in the 9th century; as that composed of linen rags (_ex linteolis contritis et aquâ maceratis_, as Pancirollus[47] expresses it) was about the 12th; and that the former supplied the place of the _charta papyracea_ in the east, as the latter superseded the use of it in the western parts of the world.
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