Then, too, there is the so-called leather paper, which is used for boxes and more recently for dados and hangings, and the crape paper now familiar abroad as a material for doilies and illustrated booklets. Japanese writing-paper, properly so called, lends itself admirably to the native brush, but not to our pointed pens, which stick and splutter in its porous fibre. But a factory at Tōkyō now turns out large quantities of note-paper sufficiently sized and glazed for European use, and remarkable for its untearable quality. Correspondents should, however, abstain from committing to this medium any communication delicate in its nature and liable to be pried into by indiscreet eyes; for the envelopes can be opened with perfect ease, and shut again without any evidence remaining of their having been tampered with. Other machine-made paper similar to that of Europe is also now manufactured for the printing of books and newspapers. This has the advantage of being able to receive an impression on both sides, whereas Japanese paper, owing to its porosity, admits of being printed on one side only.
Several plants and trees contribute their bark to the manufacture of Japanese paper. The paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera) is the most important of these; but the one most easily recognised by the unlearned is the Edgeworthia papyrifera, which has the peculiarity that its branches always divide into three at every articulation, whence the Japanese name of mitsu-mata, or "the three forks."
Book recommended. Rein's Industries of Japan, p. 389. et seq. The description is full and elaborate.
Parkes (Sir Harry). Born at Birchill's Hall, near Walsall, Staffordshire, in 1828, Sir Harry Parkes was left an orphan at the age of five, and came out to Canton, when still a lad, to be under the charge of his kinsman, the Rev. Charles Gutzlaff, a missionary and consular interpreter well-known for his writings on Chinese subjects. Sir Harry thus acquired at an early age that intimate knowledge of the Chinese language and of the Oriental character, which helped to make of him
