and Jacobson gives a wrong one, viz. its having a bright shining surface when broken. The true reason was the above-mentioned use; and as that is now very little known, it is called from that to which it is principally applied, violin-resin. It appears that, instead of pouring melted metal over plates of glass, artists for some time applied to them the before-mentioned amalgam of tin, or covered them in some other manner, perhaps in the same way as Boyle covered concave glasses in the inside. Porta however saw almost the same process employed at Murano as that which is still followed at present. The tin, hammered to thin leaves, was spread out very smoothly; and quicksilver was poured over it, and rubbed into it, either with the hand or a hare’s foot; and when the tin was saturated it was covered with paper. The glass, wiped exceedingly clean, was then laid above it; and while the workman pressed it down with his left hand, he drew out very carefully with his right the paper that lay between the tin and the glass, over which weights were afterwards placed. This much at any rate is certain, that the method of covering with tin foil was known at Murano so early as the sixteenth century[200], and therefore it is much older than J. M. Hoffmann supposes. To conclude, whether this ingenious invention belongs to the Venetians, as several later, and particularly Italian, writers assert, I can neither prove nor contradict; but it is well known that till about the end of the seventeenth century their mirrors were sold all over Europe and in both the Indies. After that period the glass-houses in other countries were improved, and new ones established; and the discovery made in France, that glass, like metal, could be cast into much larger plates than had been before prepared by blowing and rolling, was in more than one respect prejudicial to the sale of those made at Venice.