

ITS VALUE. 



fictitious, into pipe mouth-pieces, they are split on a leaden 

 plate in a turning lathe, smoothed into shape by whet-stones, 

 rubbed with chalk and water, and polished with a piece of 

 flannel. It is an especially difficult kind of work ; for unless 

 the amber is allowed frequent intervals for cooling, it 

 becomes electrically excited by the friction and shivers into 

 fragments; the men, too, are put into nervous tremors if 

 kept too long at work at one time. Amber is one of the 

 most electrically excitable of all known substances ; in fact, 

 the n$me electricity itself was derived from electron, the 

 Greek name for amber. Hookahs, chibouques, narghiles, 

 meerschaums, all are largely adorned with amber mouth- 

 pieces. The mouth-piece often consists of two or three 

 pieces of amber, interjoined with ornaments of gold and 

 gems ; it is in such case the most costly part of the pipe. 



At one of the greater industrial exhibitions four Turkish 

 amames, or amber mouth-pieces, were shown, illustrating 

 clearly enough the value attached to choice specimens ; two 

 of them were worth 350 each, two 200 each, diamond 

 studded. The Turkish and Persian pipes have often a small 

 wooden tube inside the amber mouth-piece. They require 

 frequent cleaning with a long wire and a bit of tow, and in 

 some large towns there are professional pipe-cleaners. 



The natives of British Guiana have a curious kind of pipe, 

 made of the rind of the fruit of the areca-palm, coiled up 

 into a kind of cheroot, with an internal hollow to hold the 

 tobacco. The poorer Hindoos make a simple pipe of two 

 pieces of bamboo, one cut close to a knot for the bowl, and 

 a more slen,der piece for the tube. A lower class of natives 

 in India make two holes of unequal length, with a piece of 

 stick, in a clay soil ; the holes are unequally inclined so as to 

 meet at the bottom ; the tobacco is placed in the shorter 

 hole, and the smoker, applying his mouth to the longer, 

 inhales the fumes in this primitive fashion. The pipes used 

 for opium-smoking in various parts of the East have small 

 bowls ; the drug is too costly to be used otherwise than in 

 email portions at a time, and too powerful to need more than 

 11 



