664 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



seen in the British Museum a small lion's head of blue-green 

 glass found at Thebes, which is probably the oldest specimen 

 extant. 



Under the Egyptians the art developed in all its details. They 

 knew how to melt, color, and carve it. 



The Greeks, too, used it, and many beautiful medallions were 

 made from it by them. By far the greatest number of specimens 

 of ancient glass preserved to us are Roman, and many quaint 

 cups, vases, and images in both public and private collections 

 attest the skill of the Roman glass workers. Pliny gives many 

 curious details in regard to the glass making of his time, and 

 mentions the invention of mirrors. He also speaks of the manu- 

 facture of glass in Italy from " a sort of sand found on the banks 

 of the river Volturno," and adds that the same process is used in 

 Gaul and in Spain. 



Many of the Gallo-Roman cemeteries have yielded treasures 

 of cups, necklaces, and tear bottles, iridescent fragments in which 

 the metallic reds, blues and greens, still keep their original splen- 

 dor. For many centuries it was supposed that the secret of this 

 prismatic luster was lost, but modern glass workers have suc- 

 ceeded in reproducing or at least in approximating it. 



One might dwell at length on the gradual development and 

 perfection of this wonderful art were it not that space forbids 

 and that its course has been traced by abler pens. Let us, then, 

 touch only on the Venetian fabrications, which seem to have had 

 their origin somewhere toward the fifth century, when the Vene- 

 tian population, hunted and persecuted by barbarous tribes, 

 sought refuge in the seclusion of the lagoons. Here in unmo- 

 lested peace they pursued their work, into whose mysteries they 

 had been initiated perhaps by the Egyptians or the Phoenicians, 

 and to which their own skill and artistic sense lent much. It was 

 not until the middle of the thirteenth century that the city regula- 

 tions, fearful of accidents from fire, compelled the glass makers 

 of the Rialto to establish themselves on the island of Murano, at a 

 safe distance from the homes of men. Since that time the name 

 of this little island has been closely associated with the produc- 

 tion of exquisite objects which seem to embody in their fragile 

 forms the transparent clearness or opalescent tints of the waters 

 of the Adriatic. 



Strange stories have come down to us of the vigilance with 

 which Venice guarded the secrets of her delicate handicraft. 

 Throughout the intricately woven, many-colored web of her his- 

 tory runs the thread of her glass-makers' chronicle, like the 

 gleaming lines of gold which intermingle on some fantastic Vene- 

 tian goblet. 



In the thirteenth century a fresh impetus was given to the 



