The weekly Butte record., 1861-02-09
NO. II
What is Ambar?

what is AmD1r!
How many who read this question can an-
swer it? Amber What is Amber why,
amber is-the end of a charming meerschdum
something made on purpose to please the
abials 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 a flexible tube,
in place of the ungrateful cigar, has put it to
and the prevalence of this fashion, and the gen
eral use of amber mouth-pieces, have suggested
the query What is it, and where does it come
from?
Amber is not a mineral substance though it
comes out Of the ground and has an original
kindred TO that of coal, all but the action of
fire; nor is it being reproduced like the living
races of vegetables and their deposits nor is
it an animal substance though it contains, in
many instances, the specimens of the animal
world especially of the insect races.
Amber is the resin of an extinct pine, called
the Pinus Cuectnifer, pine which does not
INV SNiob uJVi luC III, buI ID d luSoli, u
specimen of the vegetables which lived in some
early period in the worlds history when mon
ster 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 mar. BY some overwhelming catas-
trophe all these fossil races of plants ard ami
mails were destroyed, and their likes were no
more produced, so that they now only exist as
mummics to show by their embalmed remains
the habits and characteristics of the times
Says Hugh Miller, in speaking of Amber:
To the geologist this precious gum of the
Tertiary Ages is fraught with peculiar in
terest, from the circumstances that it forms
the best Of all matrices for the preservation of
organisms of the more fragile kinds. Moses,
fungi and liverwort, are plants of so delicate
structure, that they are rarely or never pre-.
served in shale Or stone but specimens of all
three have been found locked up in amber in a
state of most perfect keeping. And besides
containing fragments of the pine which produ-
ced it, it has been found to contain minute
pieces of four other species of pine with bits
of expresses, yews, jumpers, oaks, poplars,
beeches, &c.-in all forty eight different 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 Pinu
Succinifer and stuck fast, and the after flow of
the sap covered them over
sit is found" says the above named author
in the neighborhood of London; also, in
Prussia, in a clay bed of considerable horizon
tai 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 over
the level of that sea, and to which, of late
years, sort of classical interest has been given
by modern fiction, worthy from its air of
matter-offact truthfulness, of our own Defoe-
the Amber Witch Not less than eight
hundred pounds weight of this substance has
been thown up on the coast of East Prussia
by single storm.