Since the time when the observing Herodotus wrote that the sacred crocodiles of Memphis wore ear-rings of melted stone, the collecting of glass has encouraged its finer development. The ancient glass-workers were proud enough to sign fine pieces, though these are excessively rare. There was, for instance, “Africanus, citizen of Carthage, artist in glass.” Nero was an ardent collector of fine pieces of glass, collecting them in his own peculiar manner, as we may infer from such anecdotes as that which has already been related of Petronius having broken a precious bowl (probably of murrhine) to atoms just before his death, to prevent the possibility of its falling into the grasp of the Emperor. So greatly was it prized at the time that its value had been placed at a sum now equivalent to $250,000! The very high prices paid to-day by museums for bits of antique glass are very likely to be far less than the same objects brought in Roman times; this, of course, refers only to glass of high artistic quality, such as would have commanded the attention of connoisseurs contemporary with its product. “Who,” says Dr. Johnson in “The Rambler,” “when he saw the first sand or ashes by a casual intenseness of heat melted into metallic form, rugged with excrescences and crowded with impurities, would have imagined that in the shapeless lump lay concealed so many conveniences of life as would in time constitute a great part of the happiness of the world? Thus was the first artificer of glass occupied, though without his own knowledge or expectation. He was facilitating and prolonging enjoyment of light, enlarging the avenues of science and conferring the highest and most lasting pleasure; he was enabling the student to contemplate nature and the beauty to behold herself.” We need not go into the early history of glass here, more than to say the ancients were highly skilled in the making of mosaic and millefiori glass, their products inspiring the millefiori glass of the Venetians and their followers in Europe and America. One cannot do better than to quote here M. A. Wallace-Dunlop’s “Glass in the Old World,” a most interesting and instructive work, unfortunately long out of print. In this volume the author says: