Pliny informs us that table-books of wood--generally made of box or
citron wood--were in use before the time of Homer, that is, nearly three
thousand years ago; and in the Bible we read of table-books in the time
of Solomon. These table-books were called by the Romans _pugillares_,
which may be translated "hand-books"; the wood was cut into thin slices,
finely planed and polished, and written upon with an iron instrument
called a _stylus_. At a later period, tables, or slices of wood, were
usually covered with a thin layer of hard wax, so that any matter written
upon them might be effaced at pleasure, and the tables used again. Such
practice continued as late as A.D. 1395. In an account roll of Winchester
College of that year we find that a table covered with green wax was kept
in the chapel for noting down with a style the daily or weekly duties
assigned to the officers of the choir. Ivory also was used in the same
way.

Wooden table-books, as we learn from Chaucer, were used in England as
late as the fifteenth century. When epistles were written upon tables of
wood they were usually tied together with cord, the seal being put upon
the knot. Some of the table-books must have been large and heavy, for
in Plautus a schoolboy seven years old is represented as breaking his
master's head with his table-book.

Writing seems also to have been common, at a very early period, on palm
and olive leaves, and especially on the bark of trees--a material used
even in the present time in some parts of Asia. The bark is generally cut
into thin flat pieces, from nine to fifteen inches long and two to four
inches wide, and written on with a sharp instrument. Indeed, the tree,
whether in planks, bark, or leaves, seems in ancient times to have
afforded the principal materials for writing on. Hence the word _codex_,
originally signifying the "trunk or stem of a tree," now means a