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
name 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 L350 each, two
L200 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 slender 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
small portions at a time, and too powerful to need more than a few
whiffs to produce the opium-smoker's dreary delirium.

The Tunisians use reeds for pipes. Stone pipes are found among the
natives of Vancouver; while Strong Bow, the North American Indian
chief, has his long wooden pipe of peace, decked out with tassels and
fringes, but with an ominous-looking sharp steel cutting instrument
near the end most remote from the bowl.

Chinese, Japanese, Philippine Islanders, Madagascans, Central
Africans, Algerine Arabs, Mexicans, Paraguayans, Siamese, Tahitians,
South American Indians,