Lime.—The use of this is almost solely to be considered as a soil improvement, and not as that of a manure. Sulphate of lime (gypsum) is, however, occasionally used as a dressing for clover, and also for hops. The fact that superphosphate itself contains a considerable amount of sulphate of lime renders the special application of gypsum unnecessary, as a rule.
As compared with “natural” manures, like farm-yard manure, artificial manures have the disadvantage that they, unlike it, do not improve the physical condition of the soil. Artificial manures have, however, the advantage over farm-yard manure that they can supply in a small compass, and even if used in small quantity, the needed nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash, &c., which crops require, and which farm-yard manure has but in small proportion. They, further, present the expensive fertilizing matters in a concentrated form, and by their application save expense in labour.
(J. A. V.*)
[1] The amount of nitrogen thus deposited annually was found at Rothamsted to be 7.21 ℔ per acre.
MANUSCRIPT, a term applied to any document written by the human hand (Lat. manû scriptum) with the aid of pen, pencil or other instrument which can be used with cursive facility, as distinguished from an inscription engraved with chisel or graver, worked laboriously. By usage the word has come to be employed in a special sense to indicate a written work of the ancient world or of the middle ages; collections of such “ancient manuscripts” being highly prized and being stored for preservation in public libraries. Down to the time of the invention of printing, and until the printed book had driven it out of the field, the manuscript was the vehicle for the conservation and dissemination of literature, and discharged all the functions of the modern book. In the present article a description is given of the development of the ancient manuscript, particularly among the Greeks and Romans, leading on to the medieval manuscripts of Europe, and bringing down the history of the latter to the invention of printing; the history of the printed volume is dealt with in the article [Book] (q.v.).
Materials.—The handbooks on palaeography describe in full the different materials which have been employed from remote time to receive writing, and may be referred to for minuter details. To dispose, in the first place, of the harder materials that have been put under requisition, we find metals both referred to by writers and actually represented by surviving examples. Thin leaves of gold or silver were recommended for the inscription of charms in particular. Leaden plates were in common use for incantations; the material was cheap and was supposed to be durable. On such plates were scratched the dirae or solemn devotions of obnoxious persons to the infernal deities; many examples have survived. As an instance of the use of soft substance afterwards hardened may be cited the practice by the Babylonians and Assyrians of writing, or rather of puncturing, their cuneiform characters on clay tablets while moist, which were afterwards dried in the heat of the sun or baked in the oven. Potsherds, or ostraka, were employed for all kinds of temporary purposes. Thousands of them have been found in Egypt inscribed with tax receipts and ephemeral drafts and memoranda, children’s dictation lessons, &c. Analogous to the clay documents of western Asia are the tablets coated with wax in vogue among the Greeks and Romans, offering a surface not to be inscribed with the pen but to be scratched with the sharp pointed stilus. These will be described more fully below. With them we class the wooden boards, generally whitened with a coating of paint or composition and adapted for the pen, which were common in Egypt, and were specially used for educational purposes. Such boards were also employed for official notices in Athens in the 4th century B.C.
Of the more pliant, and therefore generally more convenient, substances there were many, such as animal skins and vegetable growths. Practically we might confine our attention to three of them: papyrus, parchment or vellum, and paper, the employment of which, each in turn, as a writing material became almost universal. But there are also others which must be mentioned.
In a primitive state of society leaves of plants and trees strong enough for the purpose might be taken as a ready-made material to receive writing. Palm leaves are used for this purpose to the present day in parts of India; and the references in classical authors to leaves as early writing material among the Greeks and Romans cannot be dismissed as entirely fanciful.