140 The Soverane Herbe 



by the enormous trees, centuries old, as their sectional 

 rings testify, growing on them. The number of pipes 

 which have been found proves smoking to have been 

 universal in remote times, while their variety and deli- 

 cacy of carving testify to the artistic skill of their 

 makers and users. These primitive pipes are generally 

 carved out of pieces of brown porphyry, and are of 

 great polish and strength. The base is about 5 

 inches long and i^ inches broad, while the bowl is 

 slightly more than i inch high, with a diameter of 

 half an inch. 



Such appears to have been the primitive pipe, 

 but smokers soon improved on this form, as hundreds 

 of relics testify. In the same hard stone have been 

 found quantities of pipes carved in the likeness of 

 men, beasts, birds, fishes, and reptiles, with an 

 astonishing fidelity to Nature. The most interesting 

 of these, as throwing light upon the antiquity of 

 smoking, is that known as the 'elephant pipe.' It 

 is thought that this tuskless elephant is in reality the 

 mastodon, and shows smoking to have been practised 

 by the very earliest inhabitants of America. With 

 remarkable truthfulness to Nature, early smokers 

 carved their pipes into representations of a heron 

 holding a fish, a hawk grasping a bird in its talons : 

 into figures of bears, wolves, panthers, squirrels, 

 snakes, and other incidents and sights of the chase. 

 All these carvings face the smoker, and do not, as in 

 modern clays, decorate the bowl at the opposite end 

 for mere ostentation. 



These so-called pipes are really the bowls of pipes. 

 A reed or hollowed ash-stem from 2 feet to 4 feet 



