The San Francisco call., 1908-07-12
THEeE EAs AHaSe To
N4GRSD RHD GRADE2

each carload of mud for its first bath.
ready 10 be washed through & coarse
screen that catches only the larger par
ticles Of amber. Down through screen
after screen. each becoming successive
" finer. the mud is driven by gravity
and a heavy flow OF water. until at
last it passes through the END screen
on the ground floor with its almost in
finitesimal mesh that catches only the
finest powder of amber Then every
night and l1orniag the -washings are
graded according TO their size and
sacked u be sent up TO the vorkhouse,
where they are again graded for mar
ket. On the average the loads of am
Der sent TO the workhousc every II
hours aggregate s12.500
Pipe Stems Take the Best
The workhouse which is on the other
side Of Palmnicken about mile dis
tant from the mine. employs hundreds
Of girls whose sole work IS to sort and
grade the amber as II comes in Rough
ly speaking there are eight or nine diff
ferent kinds of the marketable large
pieces. The dust amber is sold to in
cense makers. and probably much of
it still goes to superstitious classes
who trust in its enchantment as medi-
cine and it's supernatural powers TO
cure disease. The middle sizes and
finest colors are made into ornaments
much priced by Persians and certain
tribes of India. While the best pieces
wind up as pipe stems, the scarcity
Of blocks large enough for an ordi-
nary pipe stem suggests the greatness
of the traffic carried on with imitation
amber
But be the choice pieces of amber
ever so few the wonder is that the
supply has not long since been ex-
hausted Savage chieftains from the
stone age down TO the warIike kaiser
have supported themselves through this
traffic, and still the supply continues
seemingly inexhaustible It is of course
generally known that amber. as found
today. is the petrifed resin of an ante
diluvian forest, but that any forest
should have been so dense and should
have shed its resin in such quantities
is inconceivable. The only tree now on
earth shedding similar resin so freely
and at all resembling the tree which
must have given US the amber is the
copal found in Zanzibar Madagascar
and the tropical regions of South
America Even though the copaI does
shed its resin freely, we cannot recon
cile the small amount 1t gives off with
the volume of that which must have
flowed In this forest primeval to create
the present amber supply. and even
H.
Cling the fact that the copaI is a
tropical growth. whereas amber is
found only little way below the
Arctic circle. Yet even more unbeltev-
able things are told by the amber
itself.
The origin of amber was first
guessed in Pliny's time. Before then
1t was believed to have come from the
tearssef Phaeton's sisters. But the dis
covery OF an insect imbedded in one of
the tears" suggested the secret of its
source Often large insects, furs.
feathers and strange forest leaves are
found preserved in the amber. I'm
douotedly they were caught by the
fluid resin dripping from the trees aud
imprisoned there till the present day
TO tell our modern scientists, better
than any photographs could, the exact
state Of life in those past ages Many
OF the specimens found in amber re-
semble things still existing, but also
more than 500 species of extinct in
sects and more than 165 species of ex-
tinct plants and trees have been classf-
hed through specimens so preserved.
As result it is known that this forest
OF resin shedding trees was sweltering
under semitropical sun before ever
man was born, while reptiles were the
highest form OF life upon earth, in the
days when birds possessed teeth. Geol-
ogists say In the cretaceous period"
Still more startling are some of the
things proved by our pipestems. Where
the Baltic now lies, partially frozen in