Mr. Robert Smith, of Blackford, England, has contrived a very ingenious and effective plan of ornamenting glass, by producing thereon permanent impressions of flowers, leaves of plants, and other objects. In this process of ornamentation, the operator goes to work by first preparing the objects to be reproduced on the glass surface with a solution of gum. The details of the figure are thus attached to the glass, in the positions required by the device. The entire face of the glass thus treated, is then covered oyer with a composition of oil, tallow, and wax, in a warm state. When this composition coat becomes solid, the objects are removed from the glass, which is now submitted to the action of fluorine gas; or liquid fluorine may be poured upon the glass; or further, the plate may be treated with fluor spar and sulphuric acid. This is the ordinary treatment involved in glass-etching - the peculiarity of Mr. Smith's process being the mode in which the design or the line of action of the acid is produced. The fluorine corrodes the glass only at the parts where the flowers or pattern objects have been placed, and hence the forms of the objects, however elaborate or delicate, are faithfully reproduced from the models supplied by nature herself.

The ornamental designs produced in this way are extremely beautiful; the figuring may be colored as fancy suggests, by the common process of "burning-in" in a furnace.