A Mexican MS. usually looks like a collection of pictures, each forming a separate study. Their materials for writing were various. Cotton cloth, or prepared skins, were used, but generally a fine fabric made from the leaves of the aloe (Agave Americana), from which a sort of paper was pre pared, somewhat resembling Egyptian papyrus, which could be made more soft and beautiful than parchment. When written, the documents were either made up into rolls or else into volumes, in which the paper was shut up like a folding screen, which gave the appearance of a book. When the Spaniards arrived in bilexico, great quantities of these MSS. were in the country ; but the first Christian archbishop, Zurmarragu, caused them to be collected from every part of the country, and had the whole burnt ! (Prescott).
In later times there have been two instances in which persons in semi-barbarous countries have constructed an alphabet, from having heard that by such means ideas were communicated in many lands. A man of the Greybo tribe, on the African coast, and a Cherokee, are said to have formed a series of letters adapted to their respective lan guages ; but in neither case was it the result of intuitive genius (Gliddon, p. 17).
Various have been the materials and implements used for writing. As was before observed, paper made from the papyrus is now in existence which was fabricated 2000 years B.C. Moses hewed out
of the rock two tables of stone on which the com mandments were written (Exod. xxxiv. r). After that time the Jews used rolls of skins for their sacred writings. They also engraved writing upon gems or gold plates (Exod. xxxtx. 30).
Before the discovery of paper the Chinese wrote upon thin boards with a sharp tool. Reeds and canes are still used as writing implements amongst the Tartars ; and the Persians and other Orientals write for temporary purposes on leaves, or smooth sand, or the bark of trees. The Arabs in ancient times wrote their poetry upon the shoulder-blades of sheep.
The Greeks occasionally engraved their laws on tables of brass. Even before the days of Homer table-books were used, made of wood, cut in thin slices, which were painted and polished, and the pen was an iron instrument called a style. In later times these surfaces were waxed over, that the writing might be obliterated for further use. Table books were not discontinued till the r4th century • of the Christian era.
At length the superior preparations of paper, parchment, and vellum, became general, and super seded other materials in many, and all entirely civilised, nations.
The European mode of writing, with its perfect and complete apparatus of pen, ink, and paper, is too well known to need description in these pages, and would be irrelevant in an article like the present.—S. P.