Sven Hedin has furnished additional evidence of the Chinese
invention of paper. On his recent journeys he found Chinese
paper that dates back to the second half of the third century
after Christ. This lay buried in the sand of the Gobi desert,
near the former northern shore of the Lop Nor Sea, where, in the
ruins of a city and in the remnants of one of the oldest houses,
he discovered a goodly lot of manuscripts, many of paper,
covered with Chinese script, preserved for some 1,650 years. The
date is Dr. Himly’s conclusion. According to Chinese sources,
paper was manufactured as early as the second millennium before
the Christian era. The character of the Gobi desert find makes
it probable that the making of paper out of vegetable fibers
was already an old art in the third Christian century.--_The
Scientific American._
(109)
See PEDIGREE.