or flexible
branches interlaced, which terminate in the heads of animals. This
vase is much cracked, probably in consequence of the violence of the
fire.

Some drinking vessels of peculiar construction have been found, which
merit a particular description. These were in the shape of a horn, the
primitive drinking-vessel, and had commonly a hole at the point, to be
closed with the finger, until the drinker, raising it above his mouth,
suffered the liquor to flow in a stream from the orifice.

[Illustration: DRINKING VESSEL.]

This method of drinking, which is still practiced in some parts of the
Mediterranean, must require great skill in order to hit the mark
exactly. Sometimes the hole at the tip was closed, and one or two
handles fitted to the side, and then the base formed the mouth; and
sometimes the whimsical fancy of the potter fashioned it into the head
of a pig, a stag, or any other animal. One in the Neapolitan Museum
has the head of an eagle with the ears of a man.

These vases are usually of clay, but cheap as is the material, it is
evident by their good workmanship that they were not made by the
lowest artists.

The learned seem to have been generally mistaken on the subject of
glass-making among the ancients, who appear to have been far more
skillful than had been imagined. The vast collection of bottles,
vases, glasses, and other utensils, discovered at Pompeii, is
sufficient to show that the ancients were well acquainted with the art
of glass-blowing.

There is no doubt but that the Romans possessed glass in sufficient
plenty to apply it to purposes of household ornament. The raw material
appears from Pliny's account to have undergone two fusions; the first
converted it into a rough mass called ammonitrum, which was melted
again and became pure glass. We are also told of a dark-colored glass
resembling obsidian, plentiful enough to be cast into solid statues.

Pliny mentions having seen images of Augustus cast in this substance.
It probably was some coarse kind of glass resembling the ammonitrum,
or such as that in which the scoriae of our iron furnaces abound. Glass
was worked either by blowing it with a pipe, as is now practiced, by
turning in a lathe, by engraving and carving it, or, as we have
noticed, by casting it in a mould.

The ancients had certainly acquired great skill in the manufacture, as
appears both from the accounts which have been preserved by ancient
authors, and by the sp