Meantime, as in other mediæval towns, the question of allowing dangerous trades to be carried on within the city bounds became a pressing one at Venice. The newly constituted _Maggior Consiglio_—it was soon after the famous _firmata_—issued a decree ‘_quod fornaces de vitro in quibus laborantur laboraria vitrea_’ should be all destroyed within the state and see of the Rivo Alto. But this apparently was found to be too extreme a measure, for in the next year the decree was modified so as to allow of the manufacture of small objects (_Verixelli_—the French _verroterie_) in little furnaces (_fornelli_) under certain conditions, and this modified regulation remained in force until the eighteenth century. The privileged position of Murano, which lay outside the see of Venice, was thus firmly established. About this time, too, we hear of furnaces worked by expatriated Venetians at Treviso, Ferrara, Padua, and Bologna, where factories had been already established, sometimes under treaty with Venice. It will be remembered that as yet the republic had no territory on the mainland of Italy. There have been some differences of opinion as to what kind of glass was produced at this time in Venice—in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, I mean. Without prejudging the question as to whether anything in the nature of enamelled glass was yet known, we have evidence for the following statements:—that the preparation of various descriptions of beads constituted at that time, as indeed it has ever since, the main staple of the industry; that in the second place, the blowing of hollow ware for general use already gave occupation to a separate guild of workmen; and that finally the members of both these guilds, together with the makers of the _rui_—the little panes of thick green glass (similar to our ‘bull’s eyes’) still to be seen in the windows of many old palaces in Venice—were devoting themselves to perfecting certain new discoveries. These related above all to the manufacture of mirrors of glass, backed with lead, of which I have already said something. Again, the making of lenses, the _oglarii di vitro_ or _lapides ad legendum_, now became a distinct industry. It was at this time (for instance in the year 1300) that we find the _Cristallai di Cristallo di Rocca_ complaining of the competition of the glass-makers. These carvers and polishers of rock crystal were already established as an important guild in Venice; they looked upon the glass-workers as intruders. On the other hand, the efforts of the latter to imitate the nobler material had no doubt an important bearing on the development of Venetian glass, for it was as a consequence of their success in making an absolutely white transparent ‘metal’ that the Venetian glass-makers first acquired a European fame. It was this _cristallo di Venezia_ that revolutionised at a later time the glass of Europe. At an early date, in spite of edicts forbidding its sale to the