aking this substance which
adds so much to our comfort and pleasure are freely given to all
countries. And after Venice had set the example, other nations turned
their attention to the study of glass-making, and soon found out this
fact, in spite of the secrecy of the Venetians. After a time the
Germans began to manufacture glass; and then the Bohemians. The latter
invented engraving on glass, which art had also been known to the
ancients, and then been lost. They also learned to color glass so
brilliantly that Bohemian glass became more fashionable than Venetian,
and has been highly thought of down to the present day.

On the next page we see an immense drinking-glass of German
manufacture, but this one was made many years after glass-making was
first started there.

This great goblet, which it takes several bottles of wine to fill, was
passed around at the end of a feast, and every guest was expected to
take a sip out of it. This was a very social way of drinking, but I
think on the whole it is just as well that it has gone out of fashion.

The old Egyptians made glass bottles, and so did the early Romans, and
used them just as we do for a very great variety of things. Their
wine-bottles were of glass, sealed and labelled like ours. We might
suppose that, having once had them, people would never be without
glass bottles. But history tells a different story. There evidently
came a time when glass bottles vanished from the face of the earth;
for we read of wooden bottles and those of goat-skin and leather, but
there is no mention of glass. And men were satisfied with these
clumsy contrivances, because in process of time it had been forgotten
that any other were ever made.

[Illustration]

Hundreds of years rolled away, and then, behold! glass bottles
appeared again. Now there is such a demand for them that one country
alone--France--makes sixty thousand tons of bottles every year. To
make bottle-glass, oxide of iron and alumina is added to the silica,
lime, and soda. It seems scarcely possible that these few common
substances melted over the fire and blown with the breath can be
formed into a material as thin and gossamer, almost, as a spider's
web, and made to assume such a graceful shape as this jug.

[Illustration]

This is how glass bottles, vases, etc., are made. When the substances
mentioned above are melted together properly, a man dips a long,
hollow iron tube into a pot filled with the boiling liquid g