Glass, as Avicen saith, is among stones as a fool among men, for it
taketh all manner of colour and painting. Glass was first found beside
Ptolomeida in the cliff beside the river that is called Vellus, that
springeth out of the foot of Mount Carmel, at which shipmen arrived.
For upon the gravel of that river shipmen made fire of clods medlied
with bright gravel, and thereof ran streams of new liquor, that was
the beginning of glass. It is so pliant that it taketh anon divers and
contrary shapes by blast of the glazier, and is sometimes beaten, and
sometimes graven as silver. And no matter is more apt to make mirrors
than is glass, or to receive painting; and if it be broken it may not
be amended without melting again. But long time past, there was one
that made glass pliant, which might be amended and wrought with an
hammer, and brought a vial made of such glass tofore Tiberius the
Emperor, and threw it down on the ground, and it was not broken but
bent and folded. And he made it right and amended it with an hammer.
Then the emperor commanded to smite off his head anon, lest that his
craft were known. For then gold should be no better than fen, and all
other metal should be of little worth, for certain if glass vessels
were not brittle, they should be accounted of more value than vessels
of gold.

All the planets move by double moving; by their own kind moving out of
the west into the east, against the moving of the firmament; and by
other moving out of the east into the west, and that by ravishing of
the firmament. By violence of the firmament they are ravished every
day out of the east into the west. And by their kindly moving, by the
which they labour to move against the firmament, some of them fulfil
their course in shorter time, and some in longer time. And that is for
their courses are some more and some less. For Saturn abideth in every
sign xxx months, and full endeth its course in xxx years. Jupiter