In a retrospective view on prior discoveries of paper material, it is not easy to ascertain how far substances also attainable beyond Australia may have been tested and even employed. That British true rushes (Junci) are eligible, that they contain about 40 per cent, of pulp-substance, and that they form a splendid substitute for rags, is long since ascertained. From this observation and calculation the inference may be drawn that the generality of rushes, sedges, and kindred plants, all allied in structure and texture, may be drawn, under the prospect of similar facility for working and similar yield, into use. This the experiments here instituted prove to be the case. Garices and many grasses furnish approximately 30 per cent, fibre, malvaceous plants average 10 to 20 per cent., and not more is obtained from the stalks of beans, peas, hops, buckwheat, potatoes, heather, broom bushes, and many other plants tried. The yield from Victorian material is much larger, moreover the supply infinitely vaster, and locally much less expensively attainable and much easier worked. Besides, the substances just indicated are generally wanted in great agricultural countries page 28 for refertilisation of fields. Nettles produce about 25 per cent, of pulp fibre, fit for a beautiful paper, easily bleached. A main staple for admixture to rag-pulp has been found in pinewood and straw of cereals. The Museum of the Melbourne Botanic Garden possesses samples of writing and printing papers, manufactured in Southern Germany, for which 30 to 40 per cent, of pinewood and 12 to 15 per cent. China-clay have been employed; wrapping paper made of 50 per cent, of pinewood, and tissue paper containing 40 per cent, pinewood; good printing paper obtained by adding 20 per cent, of aspenwood; glazed packing paper containing again 30 per cent, of pinewood; writing paper of superior quality, prepared in France, from 75 per cent, of esparto, and others solely made of that grass; paper prepared in Switzerland from wood solely, and turned out fit for packing and even inferior writing paper, and fair though not elastic millboards; packing paper made in Belgium, and printing paper prepared in Prussia, containing a large proportion of maize straw and the straw of other cereals.

The prior experiments on exclusively Australian material are very limited, as far as the writer is aware. Years ago stringy bark was shipped and tested in Britain, but seems to have borne only the character of fitness for merely coarse and brittle packing paper. Mr. Alexander Tolmer, of Adelaide, eight years ago caused paper to be made of the Australian marshmallow (Lavatera plebeja), and of the sword-rush of the sand-coast (Lepidosperma gladiatum). New Zealand Flax was pointed out as a fitting substance for paper twenty-two years ago. Good paper of an inland Lepidosperma rush, not so heavy and bulky as that experimented on by Mr. Tolmer, was prepared by Mr. Newberry, and referred to by the director of the Geological Survey in his last annual report, published in March. Some of the kinds of material now brought in paper-form before the public at the Intercolonial Exhibition were pointed out several years ago, and nearly the whole of the substances now drawn into use and submitted to the jurors were enumerated as eligible by the writer in the earlier part of 1866, in a note furnished on special inquiry to the Australasian. The percentage of pulp obtainable from the new paper fibres has not been exactly ascertained in these first, and to a certain extent preliminary, experiments; but, inasmuch as the raw stuff can be gathered in endless quantity, and as it proved evidently rich in pulp, the tabulation of the percentage was reserved for future more extended experiments. With the exception of one of the samples of stringy bark paper, all the kinds sent to the Exhibition were neither subjected to chlorine nor drawn through size. In addition, I would remark that forest regions and coast lines, swamps, and flats subject to inundations, should prominently yield the material for the factory; for on open pastures or otherwise occupied tracts of country, even paper material cannot be harvested for an unlimited period, at the expense of the soil, with impunity. In factories situated in the vicinity of forests, the soda expended in paper manufactures might be profitably regained by evaporation of the ley and calcining it with coal or sawdust. The value of Esparto, or Sparta, the grass so extensively shipped from the Mediterranean to British paper mills, varies from £5 10s. to £6 per ton. In viewing the immense supply of various kinds of paper material here cheaply available, there is no reason why they should not form, closely pressed, an article of export probably less inflammable than rags; and still more, it may safely be antici page 29 pated that, together with the consumption of rags in local factories, the new articles indicated will largely enter into the fabrication of paper, the product of Victorian industry.

The increasing scarcity of rags, scraps, and kindred substances has rendered their supply as a main article for paper making more and more inadequate, while the importation of the Esparto-fibre from the Mediterranean countries has likewise failed most fully to supply the augmented want. Hence, a variety of other substances have been tried, but few drawn into use, for the manufacture of especially the coarser kinds of paper; still, even for these, the raw material is in demand, and substitutes for the finer flax and hemp rags have been for some time much in request for the better kinds of writing-paper Under such circumstances arose, to a great extent, the desire of the late Duke of Newcastle, that throughout the British colonies investigations should be instituted into the adaptabilities of any vegetable substances eligible for paper manufacture and other textile fabrics. In compliance with the request of His Grace, I had for several years carried on inquiries, microscopical as well as technological, in this direction, whenever opportunities offered; and with the recent establishment of a laboratory in the department under my control, I was able to give these researches a practical bearing, and was thereby enabled to place in the Exhibition samples of thirty kinds of paper prepared, on my desire, by Mr. Christian Hoffmann, each kind representing the unmixed fibre of the particular plant operated on. It was not the aim to produce elegant paper, but only to show the crude nature of pressed and dried paper-pulp, without action of bleaching or glutinising substances thereon. In the selection, besides, every kind of material was discarded which could not be obtained in vast abundance, and also all plants were excluded closely allied to others already selected, otherwise the samples of the series could have been largely augmented. It may suffice on this occasion briefly to enumerate what the collection exhibits, to indicate the geographical range of the species operated on, and to point out what allied plants could likewise be drawn into use. I deemed it also desirable to notice briefly the particular use to which in each instance this paper material could be applied.