INSECTS OP A FOK1HEK WORLD. 57 ; ") 



and origin of amber are already published *. From these preludatory 

 labours and our own investigations, which we have been enabled to 

 make in the academical collection at Greifswald and Berlin, the follow- 

 ing summary is drawn. 



315. 



Upon commencing with insects which are found in amber, as the 

 organic remains belonging to an earlier formation, namely, to brown-coal, 

 we may assert there is not the least doubt that amber is a vegetable resin, 

 which must have originated like the present copal, that exudes from 

 the stem of a North American tree, namely, the Rhus copalina, Lin. 

 The tree which produced amber was doubtlessly lost with the vegetables 

 whose remains form the strata of brown-coal, and, therefore, amber is 

 still found in isolated masses in this formation. It more frequently 

 occurs, as I have above mentioned, amongst the rejectamenta of the 

 Baltic, and imbedded in the recent strata of its southern coasts, 

 especially in moory peaty places, where the ground still continues 

 covered with woods, namely, on the Prussian coasts in Pomerania, 

 upon the coasts of the peninsula Dars, which partly forms the frontiers 

 towards Mecklenburg. I have there myself frequently found it in the 

 situations above described. The way in which insects have been 

 enclosed in this amber can be no other than that they stuck to the 

 resin when this was in a fluid state, and were enveloped in it by what 

 continued to exude. According to the rapidity with which this took 

 place, depends the condition of the enclosed insect. Those which were 

 quickly enveloped are perfectly well preserved with their natural 

 colours, but those which first died and remained for a time exposed to 

 the open air, are more or less injured, and are surrounded upon the 

 surface with a white mouldy covering, and which has occasionally 

 obscured and disfigured the approximate resin. I have observed this 

 mould in many insects of the Berlin Museum, which came from 

 Prussia, and which are enclosed in a dark bubbly amber, whereas I 

 have never observed it in the bright yellow Pomeranian amber. We 

 might thence conclude that the latter was originally more fluid and the 

 former slower in exuding, and thence building a further hypothesis that 

 the two kinds proceeded from different trees. 



With respect to the families, genera, and species of insects which 



* Die Insekten in Bernstein von Dr. G. C. Bcrendt. Danzig. 1830. 4to. 



