The present type of English furnace is very wasteful, and even with good fuel it is difficult to maintain high temperatures and regularity in working. Our method of firing, raking, and teasing is very exhausting to the workmen in attendance. In many English glass works, especially those in the Stourbridge district, it is the practice to fill the pots on a Saturday morning and take until the following Monday night to melt and plain the glass, no glassware being made for three days of each week. Starting on Monday night or Tuesday morning, the glass makers work in six hour shifts day and night until Friday night or Saturday morning, when the pots are again filled and the weekly course starts over again. Abroad the pots are filled nightly and hold just sufficient metal to last out the work during the day, and are built of a capacity to suit the articles being made. The disadvantages of our method are obvious when a comparison is made with the continental method of melting the glass nightly and working it out daily, especially when the efficiency or output of the furnaces as compared with their fuel consumption is taken into consideration. Abroad the furnaces are small and compact; they take up less floor space, yet they are far greater in efficiency. As they are gas-fired, the combustion is more complete, and by the use of regenerators or recuperators greater heat is available for melting the glass quickly. Larger proportions of sand are used in the glass mixtures, which, being the cheaper component, cheapen the production of their glass wares. Owing to the more perfect combustion which takes place within the chambers of gas-fired furnaces abroad, lead glasses are successfully melted within open crucible pots. When the heat comes into direct contact with the batch materials being melted, it does its work quicker and with less fuel consumption than is the case if it has first to be conducted through the hood of covered pots which have necessarily to be used in the old English type of furnace. It is particularly noticeable that the glass workers abroad do not spend so much time upon producing an article as is usual under the English method of working. By the extensive use of moulds fitted to mechanical contrivances operated by the foot, their work is expedited and made simple and easy.