Booby
a name for a natatorial bird, the soland (i. e., solent), or channel goose, sula bassana. It is of the family pelicanidæ. These birds are found, as library), properly meant bark, and was applied to prepared papyrus tissue from its barklike appearance. The Greek biblia, in like manner, is associated with byblos-i. e., papyrus.
As is now well known, the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians had a wide and varied literature. This was preserved in two ways; either painted on the leaves of the papyrus which grew in abundance on the banks of the Euphrates, or impressed on clay shaped into tablets or cylinders. The oldest Egyptian volume still extant (in a sense the oldest BOOK BINDING BOOKKEEPING book in the world) is the "Papyrus and Ceylon with writings on talipot or Prisse," which must be assigned to a very early period of Egyptian history, probably prior to the 12th dynasty-i. e., at least 2000 B. C. Owing to its wonderful adaptability to literary purposes, the prepared papyrus tissue (see PAPYRUS) spread to Greece (at least before the time of Herodotus) and to Rome; and though it was so far supplanted, especially in certain regions, by the finer kinds of prepared skins--the material used by the Jews, Persians, and other Oriental nations-it maintained its position as a book material down to the 10th century A. D. Ali Ibn el Azhad, in 920, describes the different kinds of pen required for writing on paper, parchment, and papyrus (see Dr. Joseph Karabacek's "Das Arabische Papier," "Vienna, 1887).
The ancient papyrus book, whether Egyptian, Greek or Roman, was got up very much like a modern mounted map. A length of the material, written on one side only, was fastened to a wooden roller, round which it was wound; this formed a tama (Egyptian), kulindros (Greek), or volumen (Latin); hence our volume. Specimens of Egyptian rolls still exist, extending to upward of 20 and even 40 yards; but the great inconvenience attaching to the consulting of such enormous scrolls made it much more usual to break up any lengthy literary production into sections, each on a separate roll. In Egypt the rolls were kept in jars (holding say 9 or 10 each); in Rome in wooden boxes or canisters (often of costly workmanship), or in parchment cases. The change from the rolled to the folded form of book appears to have taken place in the ancient world after the adoption of the parchment or vellum, though practically the same arrangement of successive surfaces had been in vogue in the books or tablets of waxed wood used for notes and letters.