Note 10 — SER MARCO POLO (continued 2)

Mikroskopische Untersuchung alter ostturkestanischer Papiere, p. 9 (Vienna, 1902). I cannot pass over in silence a curious error of this scholar when he says (p. 8) that it is not proved that Cannabis sativa (called by him “genuine hemp”) is cultivated in China, and that the so-called Chinese hemp-paper should be intended for China grass. Every tyro in things Chinese knows that hemp (Cannabis sativa) belongs to the oldest cultivated plants of the Chinese, and that hemp-paper is already listed among the papers invented by Ts’ai Lun in A.D. 105 (cf. Chavannes, Les livres chinois avant l’invention du papier, Journal Asiatique, 1905, p. 6 of the reprint).