It need hardly be said that only the best kinds of glass are cut by a method which makes such demands on the time and skill of the workman; the cheaper kinds of glass are all moulded or “pressed.” Pressed glass is also essentially English, no other kind, save flint glass, being suitable for treatment in this way. It is, in the first place, essential to obtain a metal which has a low melting point, and one which does not shrink in solidifying, as that would draw it away from the sides of the mould, and so effectively spoil the design. The low melting point of the metal enables the product to be “fire polished.” In this process it is reheated to a point sufficient to melt a thin surface layer, and so remove any roughness due to the process of moulding, and leave a smooth bright surface. The art of pressing glass has been brought to a high degree of perfection, elaborate decorations being produced with ease. The cost of the process, too, has in recent years been lessened by the use of baryta and lime, in the place of lead and potash, and in this way the output has been greatly cheapened, while baryta glass, if inferior in sparkle to lead glass, is yet far more brilliant than ordinary glass. The problem how to distinguish real old glass from modern imitations is one that besets the collector at every stage of his progress. A few specimens supply their own testimony in the shape of a date, but it is by no means impossible to engrave a date on a piece of specious-looking real antiquity, and so give it a fictitious value, by making it appear “the thing which it is not.” As to the character of the glasses themselves, shape alone is no criterion of age. Apart from the possibility of deliberate imitation, it does not follow that because a piece is ponderous, clumsy in appearance and, to a modern eye, unduly capacious, that it is necessarily an early piece. Right from the beginning of glass manufacture in England, two qualities, at least, were undoubtedly manufactured; the better to ornament the tables of the great, and the poorer for service in kitchen and tavern. Whereas articles of the former were as dainty and artistic as the skill of the craftsman would allow, the latter were roughly made and deliberately ponderous to bear the rougher usage to which they were subjected. As the same practice continues up to the present day, it follows that there is in existence a considerable quantity of common glass with all the attributes, as far as shape and clumsiness of form are concerned, of that of an earlier period.