Читать книгу The Seven Sisters of Sleep. Popular History of the Seven Prevailing Narcotics of the World онлайн

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Among the Bashee group, and particularly on the island of Ibayat, the natives form very elegant and commodious pipes from different species of shells, the columella and septa of the convolutions being broken down, and a short ebony stem inserted into a hole at the apex of the spire. These are more generally formed of the shells known as the Bishop’s mitre (Mitra episcopalis) and the Pope’s mitre (Mitra papalis). Species of Terebra and Turbo are also converted into pipes.

In China, where M. Rondot calculates that there are not less than 100 millions, and Abbé Huc 300 millions of smokers, pipes are made in immense numbers. Of these there are three kinds, the water pipe, the straight pipe, and the opium pipe. Chinese pipes, and indeed those of all the Indo-Chinese races, including the Tartars, Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese, are provided with a small metallic bowl, and usually a long bamboo stem; for with persons who are in the habit of smoking, at short intervals, all day long, a large bowl would be inadmissible. By inhaling but a pinch of tobacco on one occasion, they extend the influence of a larger pipe over a greater space of time. In such cases they suffer no inconvenience from the nature of the material of which the bowl is composed. Nations that smoke larger pipes adopt some other substance, as metal would become too hot; hence we have pipes of “Samian ware” in Turkey, “Meerschaum” in Germany, and “Clay” in England and other places. My “Uncle Toby” would have burnt his fingers with a Chinese pipe of nickel silver many a time and often; and it would have required a large amount of logic to have induced Doctor Riccabocca to have exchanged his companion (his pipe, not his umbrella) for a bowl of Japanese manufacture.