HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



4E 



FLIES IX AMBER. 



OUR lady friends and readers perhaps know more 

 about the aesthetic merits of amber than we 

 do. They (and those of their gentlemen friends who 

 like their amber clouded in the mouthpieces of their 

 expensive meerschaums) may not, however, be so 

 familiar with its geological and mineralogical origin 

 as other people. Seaside visitors to the eastern 

 coasts frequently find it worth their while to come 

 from great distances and pay very expensive prices 

 for lodgings in the summer time in order to stroll 

 upon the beach, if haply they may pick up three half- 

 penny worth of amber between dinner and tea. 

 Amber has very nearly the specific gravity of sea- 

 water, and, if it does not float, is easily drifted along 

 from the Baltic to our eastern coast, but many 

 splendid specimens are picked up along the seaward 

 margin of the Eastern counties. A magnificent 

 collection of specimens of amber, which floated 

 hitherwards from its parent bed, is now in the 

 possession of Mr. W, D. Sims, of Ipswich. 



Many people may neither know nor care to know 

 that amber is a fossil gum which exuded from pines 

 and other trees two millions of years ago. They 

 may not be acquainted with the fact that the great 

 storehouse of genuine amber, not the artificial muck 

 the youngest smoker admires and proudly displays, 

 comes from the bed of the Baltic Sea, and frequently 

 contains the remains of various kinds of insects, 

 which lived here during the middle period, as well as 

 leaves, petals of flowers, and other floral organs, just as 

 another Tertiary formation shows. This is neverthe- 

 less correct ; and a bit of genuine amber in the lump 

 is a most interesting geological specimen — fVequently 

 a perfect nest of fossilised flies which were attracted 

 to the amber when it was a sweet and liquidly- 

 flowing gum, and then and there got entangled in it 

 as summer-flies in treacle, so as to suggest the poet's 

 conundrum that — 



The thing itself is neither rich nor rare. 

 The wonder's how the devil they got there. 



In the last number but one of the "Annals and 

 Magazines of Natural History " there is a paper by 

 Herr Richard Klebs, of Konigsberg, on "The Fauna 

 of Amber." The metropolis of the genuine Baltic 

 trade is at Konigsberg, so there is ample opportunity 

 for the professor to study an abundance of specimens. 

 He has been engaged twelve years on this special 

 subject, during which, he tells us, several hundred 

 thousand species of amber passed through his hands, 

 and of these he has arranged and catalogued about 

 25,000 selected specimens. In addition to the 

 Konigsberg collection, Mr. Klebs selected, arranged, 

 and catalogued another belonging to the Prussian 

 Government, containing 12,000 specimens of amber. 

 Only those familiar with the slow and tedious 

 (although delightful) process of classificatory 



arrangement know what trouble and pains all this 

 involved. 



Mr. Klebs (to sum up a long and necessarily 

 technically abtruse paper — all the more scientifically 

 valuable on that account) is able largely to contribute 

 to our entomological knowledge the evolution of 

 many modern groups of insects. In amber, for 

 instance, are found kinds which are intermediate 

 between gnats and the brachypterous, or short-winged- 

 flies. Perhaps we know more of the early history of 

 those highly-celebrated insects, the ants, from their 

 fossilised appearance in amber than from any other 

 contributing geological source. Among the fossil' 

 insects imprisoned in amber, we learn that the two- 

 winged flies, of which our too-attentive house-fly is a 

 familiar example (Diptera), is most numerous!)- 

 represented. It always has been, even before the 

 days of "fly-papers." Mr. Klebs has made the 

 acquaintance of 20,000 of them in amber alone. 

 What a geological immortality ! It is pleasant to- 

 find that fossil-lice are not numerous in amber — 

 they reser\-ed their numerical abundance to a later 

 stage of the Tertiary period. Gnats and mosquitoes 

 also " lay low " during the Miocene epoch. Those 

 filmy-winged, flower-evolving insects (Hymenoptera)" 

 are very frequently found in amber. What a life- 

 history is theirs ! If only some accurate and true 

 scientific entomologist arise — a prophet who had 

 knowledge enough to gaze from the top of Pisgah, 

 not only from the presentment of the Promised Land, 

 but on the " backward track " (Phylogeny) of the forty 

 years' wanderings in the wilderness ! Professor Klebs' 

 paper is practically all this and more. Among his studies 

 of fossilised amber are 4000 enclosed beetles, 5000 

 members of the Neuroptera (or white ant and dragon- 

 fly family), 2500 specimens of Orthoptera (cock- 

 roaches, crickets, locusts, earwigs), and lastly 

 Mantido (or leaf-insects). The reader would hardly 

 imagine that the amber specimens include more than 

 one thousand sorts of butterflies and moths. Then 

 come fossil amber bugs, plant-lice, or aphides (wh:> 

 would imagine the latter were living millions of years 

 before men and women ?). Centipedes, "saw-flies," 

 spiders (2500 specimens) are found in amber ; they 

 came after the flies, just as the flies were after the 

 sweet gum, and shared the same glorious fate ana 

 immortality. A few land-snails are also found, 

 thanks to their sluggish habits. There is sometime- 

 the feather of a bird, the scales of a lizard, and other 

 odds and ends. But what a recording angel a lump 

 of amber may be, and what a host of important 

 suggestions hang to and cluster by the above matter- 

 of-fact discoveries ! 



J. E. Taylor. 



Mr. C. H. H. Walker, 12 Church Street, Liver- 

 pool, has constructed a new slide cabinet, made 

 more especially for biological and medical students, 

 and issued, post free, at 4^. 6(/. 



