Suck′ing-tube.
Most of us are acquainted with the taste of sweet cider as sucked through a rye-straw. They are used in many parts of the world for other liquids than cider. Besides their use among us with cobblers and juleps, the Peruvian drinks his or her mate by means of a tube with fine holes to keep back the particles of leaf. The sucking-tube was used by the ancients as a domestic utensil, and also in the temples. The latter use has also descended to our times in the sanguisuchello, or blood-sucker, a golden tube by which the Pope sucks up the wine at high mass. A chalumeau, or tube of gold, and silver “pypes,” for the same purpose, are also mentioned in old inventories of church property. |
| Sanguisuchello. |
