PAPER. Thin leaves or abeets, fabricated of fibrous materials, and adapted to write or draw upon, as well as for numerous other purposes. Paper is an article of such immense importance in the commercial world, and of such general and extensive utility, that it will be well to give, in this place, a brief description of the several kinds manufactured in this country ; for this purpose, we shall divide them into three classes, viz. :—Writing Papers, Printing Papers, and Wrapping or Packing Papers, with a short notice of several miscellaneous kinds, not included under either of these heads.
Writing Papers are a very numerous class, including all those that are used for writing or drawing purposes. Writing papers are called either laid or wove, according to the description of mould upon which they have been made. Laid papers are distinguished by their retaining the wire-marks, in long parallel lines, crossed at intervals by other stronger lines, as shown in the accompanying sketch. Wove papers, on the contrary, bear no impression of the wires, the mould used for their manufacture being made of very fine copper wire, woven in a manner similar to linen— whence the derivation of the term wove. Writing papers are made of two different colours, blue and yellow. The yellow cast is the natural colour of the rag, heightened as much as possible by skilful bleaching. The blue cast is obtained by adding smalt (the powder blue of commerce,) to the pulp, while in the vat. In all blue cast papers a considerable difference of colour exists between the two sides of a sheet, from the small, which is a heavy material, falling to the side of the sheet next to the mould : the under side, therefore, is always the bluest when the paper is finished.
Laid paper is mostly of the blue cast ; wove papers are made of both kinds. Drawing papers, which are included in this class, are always made of the yellow cast, on wove moulds; and writing papas, (emphatically so called from demy upwards,) are always made of the blue cast, on laid moulds. In de
scribing any of the numerous varieties of post, copy, foolscap, or pott papers, the distinguishing term, laid, yellow-wove, or Use-wove, is always necessary to be used ; but in all papers from demy upwards, wove and drawing, or laid and writing, are synonymous terms ; where no distinguishing term is used, laid is always understood to be meant. At the paper-mill, all kinds of paper are put up in certain parcels, ealled reams; a ream of paper consists of twenty quires, viz., eighteen quires of twenty-four perfect sheets, and two quires of twenty sheets each, defective paper, one of which is placed at the to the other at the bottom of the ream, to preserve the perfect or inside paper from string-marks, and other injuries, to which, but for this precaution, it would be liable. If the two outside quires are replaced by two perfect quires, the ream is stated to be ail insides, and the original value is increased five per cent. A printer's ream consists of twenty-one and a half unbroken quires, of twenty-four sheets each, and is called a ream; the perfecting, as it is technically termed, increases the value one eighth.
The following comprehensive table gives the names, dimensions, and weight, per ream, of the several papers in this class.
Drawing papers are not made smaller than dewy, and are put up into reams in the fiat state ; writing papers, on the contrary, are not made larger than double elephant, very seldom larger than imperial, and are usually folded. The laid papers are distinguished by certain peculiar water marks; thus, post has a bugle-horn; copy, a fleur-de-lis; foolscap, a lion rampant, or Britannia; and pott paper has the English arms. By a knowledge of these marks, the original size of any paper can at once be discovered, however much it may bays been subse quently reduced in size. This observation only applies to the laid papers, as in wove paper the water-mark never appears.