Part 28 (1/2)
These curious formations, some of which appear like stars, others like very simple blossoms, while others are very complex; and some of which take the form of fern-leaves, are caused to appear in the centre of a block of ice by means of concentrated rays of lights which are directed through the ice by means of mirrors and lenses. Sometimes they are observed by means of a magnifying-gla.s.s, and in other experiments their images are thrown upon a white screen.
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We may consider these ice-flowers as very beautiful and very wonderful, but they are not a whit more so than our little blossoms of the apple-orchard.
The latter are more common, and have to produce apples, while the ice-flowers are uncommon, and of no possible use.
That is the difference between them.
ABOUT GLa.s.s.
Gla.s.s is so common and so cheap that we never think of being grateful for it. But if we had lived a few centuries ago, when the richest people had only wooden shutters to their windows, which, of course, had to be closed whenever it was cold or stormy, making the house as dark as night, and had then been placed in a house lighted by gla.s.s windows, we would scarcely have found words to express our thankfulness. It would have been like taking a man out of a dreary prison and setting him in the bright world of G.o.d's blessed suns.h.i.+ne.
After a time men made small windows of stones that were partly transparent; and then they used skins prepared something like parchment, and finally they used sashes similar to ours, but in them they put oiled paper. And when at last gla.s.s came into use, it was so costly that very few were able to buy it, and they had it taken out of the windows and stored carefully away when they went on a journey, as people now store away pictures and silver-plate.
Now, when a boy wants a clear, white gla.s.s vial for any purpose, he can buy it for five cents; and for a few pennies a little girl can buy a large box of colored beads that will make her a necklace to go several times around her neck, and bracelets besides. These her elder sister regards with contempt; but there was a time when queens were proud to wear such. The oldest article of gla.s.s manufacture in existence is a bead. It has an inscription on it, but the writing, instead of being in letters, is in tiny little pictures.
Here you see the bead, and the funny little pictures on it. The pictures mean this: ”The good Queen Ramaka, the loved of Athor, protectress of Thebes.” This Queen Ramaka was the wife of a king who reigned in Thebes more than three thousand years ago, which is certainly a very long time for a little gla.s.s bead to remain unbroken!
The great city of Thebes, where it was made, has been in ruins for hundreds of years. No doubt this bead was part of a necklace that Queen Ramaka wore, and esteemed as highly as ladies now value their rubies. It was found in the ruins of Thebes by an Englishman.
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It may be thought that this bead contradicts what has been said about there being a time when gla.s.s was unknown, and that time only a few centuries ago. But it is a singular fact that a nation will perfectly understand some art or manufacture that seems absolutely necessary to men's comfort and convenience, and yet this art in time will be completely lost, and things that were in common use will pa.s.s as completely out of existence as if they had never been, until, in after ages, some of them will be found among the ruins of cities and in old tombs. In this way we have found out that ancient nations knew how to make a great many things that enabled them to live as comfortably and luxuriously as we do now. But these things seem to have perished with the nations who used them, and for centuries people lived comfortlessly without them, until, in comparatively modern times, they have all been revived.
Gla.s.s-making is one of these arts. It was known in the early ages of the world's history. There are pictures that were painted on tombs two thousand years before Christ's birth which represent men blowing gla.s.s, pretty much as it is done now, while others are taking pots of it out of the furnaces in a melted state. But in those days it was probably costly, and not in common use; but the rich had gla.s.s until the first century after Christ, when it disappeared, and the art of making it was lost.
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The city of Venice was founded in the fifth century, and here we find that gla.s.s-making had been revived. You will see by this picture of a Venetian bottle how well they succeeded in the manufacture of gla.s.s articles.
Venice soon became celebrated for this manufacture, and was for a long time the only place where gla.s.s was made. The manufacturers took great pains to keep their art a secret from other nations, and so did the government, because they were all growing rich from the money it brought into the city.
In almost any part of the world to which you may chance to go you will find Silica. You may not know it by that name, but it is that s.h.i.+ning, flinty substance you see in sand and rock-crystal. It is found in a very great number of things besides these two, but these are the most common.
Lime is also found everywhere--in earth, in stones, in vegetables and bones, and hundreds of other substances.
Soda is a common article, and is very easily produced by artificial means. Potash, which has the same properties as soda, exists in all ashes.
Now silica, and lime, and soda, or potash, when melted together, form gla.s.s. So you see that the materials for making this substance which adds so much to our comfort and pleasure are freely given to all countries. And after Venice had set the example, other nations turned their attention to the study of gla.s.s-making, and soon found out this fact, in spite of the secrecy of the Venetians. After a time the Germans began to manufacture gla.s.s; and then the Bohemians. The latter invented engraving on gla.s.s, which art had also been known to the ancients, and then been lost. They also learned to color gla.s.s so brilliantly that Bohemian gla.s.s became more fas.h.i.+onable than Venetian, and has been highly thought of down to the present day.
On the next page we see an immense drinking-gla.s.s of German manufacture, but this one was made many years after gla.s.s-making was first started there.
This great goblet, which it takes several bottles of wine to fill, was pa.s.sed around at the end of a feast, and every guest was expected to take a sip out of it. This was a very social way of drinking, but I think on the whole it is just as well that it has gone out of fas.h.i.+on.
The old Egyptians made gla.s.s bottles, and so did the early Romans, and used them just as we do for a very great variety of things. Their wine-bottles were of gla.s.s, sealed and labelled like ours. We might suppose that, having once had them, people would never be without gla.s.s bottles. But history tells a different story. There evidently came a time when gla.s.s bottles vanished from the face of the earth; for we read of wooden bottles and those of goat-skin and leather, but there is no mention of gla.s.s. And men were satisfied with these clumsy contrivances, because in process of time it had been forgotten that any other were ever made.
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