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superseded the use of it in the western parts of the world.