PAPYRUS, a genus of plants of the natural order cyperacece, of which there are several species, the most important being the EGYPTIAN PAPYRUS or.papyrus of the ancients (P. •antiquorum, cyperus papyrus of linnieus); a kind of sedge, 8 to 10 ft. high; with a very strong, woody, aromatic, creeping root; long, sharp-keeled leaves; and naked, leafless, triangular, soft, and cellular steins, as thick as a man's arm at the lower part, and at their upper extremity bearing a compound umbel of extremely numerous drooping .spikelets, with a general involucre of 8 , long filiform leaves, each spikelet containing 4-13 florets. By the ancient Egyptians it was called papa, from which the Greek papyrus is derived, although it was also called by them byblos or deltos. The Hebrews called it goneh, a word resembling the Coptic gone, or volume; its modern Arabic name is berdi. So rare is the plant in the present day in Egypt, that it is supposed to have been introduced either from Syria or Abyssinia; but it has been seen till lately in the vicinity of the lake Menzaleh, and specimens sent to England; and, as it formerly was considered the emblem of northern Egypt, or the Delta, and only grown there if intro duced,•it must have come from some country lying to the north of Egypt. It has been found in modern times in the neighborhood of Jaffa, on the banks of the Anapus, in the pools of the Liane, near Syracuse, and in the vicinity of lake Thrasymenus. It is repre sented on the oldest. Egyptian monuments, and as reaching the height of about 10 ft. It was grown in pools of still water, growing 10 ft. above the water, and 2 beneath it, And restricted to the districts of Sais and Sebennytus. The papyrus was used for many purposes both ornamental and useful, such as crowns for the bead, sandals, boxes, boats, and cordage, but principally for a kind of paper called by its name. Its pith was b,» led and eaten, and its root dried for fuel. The papyrus or paper of the Egyptians was of the greatest reputation in antiquity, and it appears on the earliest monuments in the shape of long rectangular sheets, which were rolled up at one end, and on which the scribe wrote with a reed called leash, with red or black ink made of an animal carbon. The process of making paper from the papyrus is described in the article PAPER. When newly prepared, it was white or brownish white and lissom; but in the process of time, those papyri which have reached the present day have become of a light or dark brown color, and exceedingly brittle, breaking to the touch. While papyrus was com
monly used in Egypt for the purposes of writing, and was, in fact, the paper of the period, although mentioned by early Greek authors, it does not appear to have come into general use among the Greeks till after the time of Alexander the great, when it was extensively exported from the Egyptian ports under the Ptolemies. Fragments, indeed, have been found to have been used by the Greeks centuries before. It was, however, always an expensive article to the Greeks, and a sheet cost more than the value of a dollar. .Among the Romans, it does not appear to have been in use at an early period, although the Sibylline books are said to have been written on it, and it was cultivated in Calabria, Apulia, and the marshes of the Tiber. But the staple was no doubt imported from Alexandria, and improved or adapted by the Roinan manufactu rers. So extensive was the Alexandrian manufactory that Hadrian, in his visit to that city, was struck by its extent; and later in the empire, an Egyptian usurper (Firrnus, 272 A.D.) is said to have boasted that he could support an army off his materials. It continued to be employed in the eastern and western empire till the 12th c., and was used amongst the Arabs in the 8th; but after that period it was quite superseded by parch ment. At the later periods it was no longsr employed in the shape of rolls, but cut up square pages, and bound like modern books.
. As a matter of scientific interest, experiments on the manufacture of paper from the papyrus have been made in recent times by Landolina, Seyffarth, and others.—Another species of papyrus (P. corymbosus or P. Pangorei) is much used in India for making mats. See INDIAN-GRASS MATTING.
PAR, or PARR, a small fish, also called BILA_V`DLrNa and FINGERLING in different parts of Britain, inhabiting rivers and streams, and at one time believed to be a distinct species of the genus salmo, but now almost universally regarded as the young of the salmon. The question will be noticed in the article SALMON. It may here, however, be mentioned, that it is difficult to discriminate the young of different species of this genus_ The par rises with extraordinary readiness to the artificial fly; and until it began to receive protection as the fry of the salmon vast numbers were killed both by youthful and adult anglers.