234 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE, 
mens of these times have reached us. In the form of mosaic it must have been 
extensively cultivated, at least from the fourth and fifth to the ninth and tenth 
centuries. We may be tolerably certain that the beginnings of the Venetian art 
came from Oriental and Byzantine sources. But there are no records relating to 
its glass previous to the twelfth century. In 1268 we have notices of scent :j 
bottles and table ware, and in 1275 the exportation of the materials used in the 
manufacture was prohibited. So rapidly did it grow into commercial importance 
that the State intervened to protect and encourage it in every possible way, and 
to make it a national monopoly. In this it succeeded so far that the fine manu- 
factures of Venice controlled the markets of the known world for centuries \ and 
although more or less successful attempts were made in other countries to be- 
come independent of her, none ever succeeded in equaling the variety, beauty, 
and refinement of the best Venetian work. The republic wisely ennobled the 
art, and in 1376 decreed that the descendants of glass-blowers who intermarried 
into the noble families should be considered as patricians. Particular civil privi- 
leges were conferred on the guild. It was not amenable to the inferior courts, 
but was under the special jurisdiction of the celebrated Council of Ten. 
Although Venice itself gives its name to the glass as early as 1291, the works 
in general were removed by statute order from that city, and established in the 
neighboring island of Murano, a mile to the northeast, where there were already in 
existence manufactories, but on a smaller scale. This was to guard against the 
risk of fires in the thickly populated city, and for sanitary reasons. Henceforth 
Murano became the chief locality of this industry, which finally took such pro- 
portions that the street along the chief canal, more than a mile long, became 
mainly devoted to it. Coccio Sabellico, in his account of Venice, written about 
1495, thus alludes to Murano : 
"There is a street which might, from the magnificence and size of its edi- 
fices to those who beheld it from afar, appear a city ; it extends a mile in length, 
and is illustrious on account of its glass-houses. A famous invention first proved 
that glass might feign the whiteness of crystal, and as the wits of men, are active 
and not slothful in adding something to inventions, they soon began to turn the 
material into various colors and numberless forms. Hence came cups, beakers, 
tankards, caldrons, ewers, candlesticks, animals of every sort, horns, necklaces; 
hence all things that can delight mankind ; hence whatever can attract the eyes 
of mortals ; and, what we could hardly dare to hope for, there is no kind of precious 
stone which cannot be imitated by the industry of the glass-workers. Consider 
to whom it did occur to include in a little ball all the sorts of flowers which clothe 
the meadows in spring. ^ Nor has the invention been confined to one house or 
family ; the street glows for the most part with furnaces of this kind." 
This is a graphic description of the condition of the industry at Murano in 
latter part of the fifteenth centry, when it was bordering on its most artistic and 
flourishing period, in which it was a virtual monopoly of the Republic. Murano 
Referring to one kind of MiiZe/io?-i— tliousand flowers— glass, made from canne, or I'ods of 
many colors. 
