Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 44.djvu/250

 account of such specimens of the class under consideration as have been obtained up to the present time. All the specimens figured are in the collection of the University of Vermont, and all, except Fig. 11, are given of full size.

Our simplest pipes—and it is difficult to imagine a simpler form—are represented by Fig. 1. This is merely a rounded bit of steatite of a grayish color, fairly well shaped and smoothly finished. The excavation is of the same general form as the outside and is very well done. At the top it is rather more than half an inch across. As the figure shows, the opening for the stem is a little below the middle of one side. It is about a fourth of an inch in diameter on the outside, and slopes upward, so that the bowl hung obliquely on the stem. Such a pipe as this must have had some sort of a stem, either a bit of hollow reed, a twig with the pith removed, or the wing bone of a bird.

In Fig. 2 we see a somewhat more elaborate specimen, though the material is very much the same. As the line showing the excavation indicates, the stem, if there was one, entered at the bottom. It is also noticeable that the inside does not at all correspond

with the outside, but is more regular. About the upper margin there is a rather weak attempt at decoration in rudely incised lines around the bowl and oblique lines between. This pipe is well polished. It is two inches and a quarter long and seven eighths of an inch in diameter at the top.

No other specimen from this region is in any respect like that shown in Fig. 3. As may be readily seen in the figure, there are two bowls of nearly equal size. The separation of the bowls is,