BERNARD PALISSY was born in 1510, in the province of Perigord, in France. His father was a brickmaker, and Palissy first worked at making tiles, bricks, and earthenware. He quitted his father's kiln and apprenticed himself to some glass-workers. The glass manufacture then included, not only melting the glass, and cutting it into panes, but also covering them with paintings for the cathedral windows. In his desire for improvement, he spent all his leisure time in reading such instructive books as he could get, studying geometry, botany and other branches of natural history.

Palissy, according to the custom of the time, worked his way from town to town until he reached Tarbes, built on a plateau facing the Pyrenees, in which glass-painting then flourished. A mere artisan when he entered the labyrinth of the Pyrenees, he left it a painter and a poet. He soon tired of the dull routine of the workshop at Tarbes, and traveled as a draughtsman and modeler of images through all the provinces of France from Marseilles to Flanders. His wanderings over the Alps and Pyrenees, and the interest he took in the various qualities of the earths, rocks, sands, and waters in their relation to his business, had made him a naturalist. To the solitary man of genius, nature was both a teacher and