Daily national Democrat., 1861-01-01
Amber.

What is Amber? How many who read
this question can answerit? Amber! What
Is amber why amber is-the end of
charming meerschduDi-somethng made on
purpose to please the labials and gently spice
the passing aroma as it finds its way to the
anxious palate. Yes; that is the use which
the present fashion OF substituting heavy
bulb with flexible tube, in place of the un-
grateful cigar, has put it to and the preva-
lence of this fashion, and the general use of
amber mouth-pieces, have suggested the
query What is it, and where does it come
from?
Amber is not mineral substance though it
comes out Of the ground and has an origin
kindred to that of coal, all but the action of
! fire nor is it being reproduced like the iv-
ing races of vegetables and their deposits !;
nor is it an animal substance, though it cons
tains, in many instances, the specimens of the
animal world, especially of the insect races.
Amber is the resin of an extinct pine, CALI
ed the Pinus Saccinifcr, a pine which does
not now exist upon the earth, but is fossil,
a specimen of the vegetables which lived in
some early period in the worlds history
when monster frogs, as large as cows, and
lizards large enough to feed on such frogs,
sported on this mundane sphere-a period
anterior to the formation of the surface of the
earth for the abode of man. BY some over
whelming catastrophe all these fossil races of
plants and animate were destroyed and their
likes were no more produced, so that they
now only exist as Wuplmias 10 show by their
embalmed remains the habits and character
istics of their times. Says Hugh Miller, in
speaking of Amber
"To the geoogist this precious gum of the
Tel tiary Ages is fraught with q peculiar in-
terest, from the circumstances that it forms
the best of all matrices for the preservation
OF organisms of the more fragile kinds. Moss
es, fungi and liver worts, are plants of SO del
icate structure, that they are raFely or nev~
er preserved in shale or stone; but specimens
OF all three have been found locked up in am
Der in a state of most perfect keeping And
besides containing fragments Of the pine
which produced it, it has been found to con-
tIin minute pieces of four other species of pine,
with bits of Expresses, yews jumpers, oaks
poplars, beeches, Gc-in all forty-eight diff
ferent species of shrubs and trees.
In the amber of Prussia eight hundred diff
ferent kinds of insects have been determined,
most of them belonging to species and even
genera, that appear to be distinct from any
now known. The little hutterers must have
settled on the bleeding trunks of the PinuS
,Succinifer and stuck fast, and the after flow
of the sap covered them over"
The amber, then, comes down to us from
former generation of pines, whose race was
exterminated before Adam was formed and
no amber has been produced since the crea-
tion of the human race"
at is found" says the above mentioned au-
thor, "in the neighbOrhcOd of London also,
in Prussia, in a clay bed Of considerable hor-
izontal extent, of which the larger part lies
under the waves of the Baltic, but which rises
on some parts Of the coast about forty feet
ever the leYei of that sea, and to which of
late years sort of classical interest has been
given 10y modern fiction, worthy from its
air of matter-of- fact truthfulncss, Of our own
Defoe-the Amber Witch Not less than
eight hundred pounds weight of this subject
has been thrown up on the coast of East
Prussia by single storm.