excellence of which depends upon sand.

If Bohemia succeeded finally in making clearer and whiter glass than Venice, it was because Bohemia produced better sand. When the town of Murano furnished the world with glass, its population was thirty thousand. That number has dwindled to four thousand. Bohemian glass stood unrivaled until England discovered flint or lead glass; now, the world looks to the United States for rich cut glass, the highest artistic expression of modern glass.

Where does America begin its evolution in glass? Before the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. In 1608, within a mile of the English settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, a glass house was built in the woods. Curiously enough it was the first factory built upon this continent. This factory began with bottles, and bottles were the first manufactured articles that were exported from North America.

In those early days glass beads were in great demand. Indians would sell their birthright for a mess of them, so when the first glass house fell to pieces, a second took its place for the purpose of supplying the Indians with beads.

A few years later common glass was made in Massachusetts. It appears from the records of the town of Salem that the glass makers could not have been very successful, as that town loaned them thirty pounds in money which was never paid back.

During the time of the Dutch occupation of Manhattan Island, when New York was known as New Amsterdam, a glass factory was built near Hanover Square, but not until after the Revolution came and went did glass making really take root in American soil. In July, 1787, the Massachusetts Legislature gave to a Boston glass company the exclusive right to make glass in that State for fifteen years. This company prospered and was the first successful glass manufacturing company in the United States. Then followed others that were successful. As early as 1865 there was manufactured, in the vicinity of Boston, glass that was the equal of the best flint glass manufactured in England. Two hundred and fifty years from the time the first rough bottles were exported from Virginia to England seems a long time to us, but how short a time it really is in the life of this ancient art—this drama of glass.

It is always interesting to trace the history of a great industry. Like the oak, it begins with a small seed that hardly knows its own mind, and is often more surprised than the rest of the world at the result of earnest effort. See what apothecaries did for Italy. Mediæval art and the Medicis go hand in hand. The drama of glass in the United States may have as significant a mission, for it is singularly true that James Jackson Jarves, son of Deming Jarves, the pioneer glass manufacturer of New England, was almost the first American to give his life to the study of old masters and to devote his fortune to collecting their works. The Jarves gallery now belongs to Yale University.