In the case of the hollow cane or tube, we start from a ‘gathering’ at the end of the blowing-iron; this gathering is slightly inflated to form an incipient _paraison_, and a rod of iron is attached to the further extremity. This rod is seized by a boy—the _tirador_—who runs with it at full speed so as to elongate the glass as much as possible before it has time to cool; the thin tube, or _canna_, thus formed may, it is said, be as much as 150 feet in length. This tube, broken into rods of convenient lengths, then passes into the hands of another set of workmen, living for the most part in Venice. The rods are now carefully sorted, as to size, by women—the _cernatrici_—and handed over to the cutter, who, seated at a bench, cuts off equal lengths by passing the rod between a blade or chisel held in the hand, and a similar tool fixed in the bench, the size of the fragments being regulated by means of the _scontro_, a semi-cylindrical block of steel. If the object was to manufacture the little cylindrical bugles or _jais_, the bead—if so it may be called—is now completed. But in the case of a normal bead, the edges had now to be rounded. With this object the aperture of the little tubes had first to be filled with some infusible substance; this was done by rolling them in the hand with a finely ground mixture of lime and charcoal. They were now placed along with a quantity of sand in a tubular iron receptacle, which was rotated over the furnace.[138] By this means the angular edges were rounded off. The beads were then sifted from the sand and shaken up in a bag to remove the material with which the tubes had been plugged; finally they were sorted into various sizes by means of a sieve, and, in the case of spherical beads, those of irregular shape were eliminated by rolling them on an inclined table. It only remained for the _lustratori_ to give them a final polish by shaking them up in a sack with bran. This was the process adopted for the smaller beads—the _conterie_—which, before packing, were threaded on a string by girls. The larger _perle_, such as the _perle a rosette_, or chevron beads, of which I shall speak presently, had to be ground into shape on the wheel. Any ornament or design that appears on these beads depended of course upon the constitution of the original _canna_. This was often built up of a succession of layers of various colours, obtained by dipping the first gathering into one or more pots of coloured glass, before drawing it out to form a tube.