There has been concocted a peculiar kind or brand of the plant under the title of scafarlatti, which seems to have gained great celebrity in the United States as being the genuine Turkish article. This appellation is as yet unknown in Turkey, and must have sprung from the inventive brain of some one of the Barnum race, who would even enlarge the Turkish vocabulary at the expense of the lingua Italiana.
Not to notice the Western nations, who, with their clay pipes, have remained in statu quo in the art of smoking, the Germans deserve some criticism: for they have made many attempts to arrive at perfection.
The material of which the German pipe-bowls are made, poetically called meerschaum, is ill adapted for the purpose, and the forms of their stems and mouth-pieces imply entire ignorance of the science of smoking.
The meerschaum, or froth of the sea, is a native rock formation of Turkey, and is excavated about two or three hundred miles from the sea of Marmora. Every particle is exported to Vienna, and it is never used by the natives, because it is a calcareous substance, and when in contact with fire undergoes a process of combustion to a sufficient degree to decompose the tobacco. This fact is well attested by the circumstance that a meerschaum pipe-bowl is greatly enhanced in value when by a long and tedious process it has lost all its combustible properties, and is thus rendered incapable of deteriorating the tobacco. But why select a substance which requires so long an apprenticeship, when nature furnishes one well suited for the purpose? and why esteem an article for its power of absorption and then prize it the more for having lost it by time and use? German philosophy only can explain!
Apart from the unfitness of meerschaum for the bowl, the form in which it is modelled shows how little the nature of tobacco is understood by those sturdy people; for the form of an elongated cylinder only serves to surround the weed by a heavy body of combustible material capable of containing an excessive degree of heat, and thus decomposing the tobacco. But the main object of these amateurs of the mere-sham seems to be to deteriorate the fume of the narcotic plant as much as possible--for to cap the climax of their absurdity, a metallic cover is nicely fitted to those exquisite pipe-bowls, and thus the favorite meerschaum is converted into a perfect retort for the manufacture of tobacco-gas!