纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 037北美水獭烟(1)（在线收听）

The pipe I have here is about the size and shape of a kazoo, the children's toy music pipe that makes buzzing sounds when you blow through it.

这只烟斗的大小类似于卡祖笛。

So it's not like any normal modern pipe with a long stem and a bowl at one end. This one is carved in reddish stone and has a flat base about four inches (10 cm) long,

现代烟斗一般是一根一头带斗的长管，而文中这只由红色的石头雕成，还有一块长约十厘米的扁平底座，

so it's almost exactly the colour and the size of a bourbon biscuit, and at one end is carved a small hole to serve as the mouth piece.

大小和颜色都与巧克力夹心饼干类似。底座的一头雕有小孔，起烟嘴的作用。

The pipe bowl is halfway down, but it's no simple hollow for holding the tobacco,

斗的部分则位于中央，并非一个简单的碗形斗，

because it's in the shape of the upper half of a swimming otter, with its paws perched on the bank of a river, and it looks as though it's just popped up out of the water to look around.

而是形似一只漂在水里的水獭的上半身，仿佛它刚从水里冒出头，爪子搭在河岸上，正要四处张望。

The stone is smooth, and to me it beautifully suggests the sleek wet fur of the animal.

烟斗通体光润，完美表现出水獭湿漉漉的闪亮皮毛。

The otter looks along the pipe so that, as you smoke it, both you and the otter would be looking into each other's eyes.

水獭此刻正朝烟嘴的方向看去，人抽烟斗时就仿佛在与它对视。

But in fact you are even closer to this animal than that suggests, because if I try to smoke it now and put it to my mouth, I discover that I am literally nose-to-nose with the otter.

但其实抽烟的人与它之间的距离还会更近些：把烟斗含在嘴里,你的鼻子就会碰到水獭的鼻子。

And that contact would have been even more striking than it is now, because the empty eye sockets would have been inlayed with fresh water pearls.

如今留在水獭眼窝处的深坑当年应镶嵌翁淡水珍珠，让抽烟人与水獭的接触更有趣味。

This wonderfully crafted and evocative object pinpoints in history the world's earliest use of tobacco pipes.

这只工艺精美的烟斗是目前已知世界上最早被使用过的烟斗之一，

Sherlock Holmes probably didn't know it, but this is where the story of pipe-smoking begins.

福尔摩斯未必也知道，它是烟斗历史的起点。