ANCESTRAL SPIDERS AND THEIR HABITS. 463 



the Pregel, the Deima. It is hilly towards the northwest, the ground 

 rising to heights of two and three hundred feet, and becoming flat towards 

 the northeast and east, and gradually sinking down towards tlie nortli- 

 eastern angle. In the elevated northwestern coast Tertiai'v beds art; con- 

 spicuous at a height from eighty to one hundred and twenty-live feet 

 above the sea level, in which amber deposits are found. 



Zaddach ' defines the site of the amber forests as a bay whose bed in- 

 cluded the whole of West Prussia, a neighboring portion of Pomerania, and 

 the western half of East Prussia, and which was connected in the 

 Amber southwest with the great Tertiary sea that covered the larger por- 

 tion of Germany. The northern boundary of this bay left Sam- 

 land at some distance, and was continued westward with some irregularity to 

 Ruckslioft (Rixliuft), which lies at the foot of the peninsula of llela, and 

 where thick Brown-coal beds crop out on the coast of the Baltic. The 

 bay was a basin in the Cretaceous formation, and was bordered by widely 

 extended flat coasts, which mark the last upheaval of the district. Number- 

 less rivulets with small discharge emptied themselves into the bay and 

 carried solid matter into it, and another stream from the northwest, which 

 flowed from the southern portion of the Cretaceous land, also discharged 

 itself here. 



The coasts of this bay were covered with luxuriant plant growths, a 

 flora whose delicate structure is still preserved to us in the aml)er and 

 coal. The forests which covered the shores of this bay and oc- 

 '^''®®®. cupied the group of islands or insular continent beyond, were. 

 Amber ^ according to Zaddach, the native home of the amber. This 

 amber resin issued from the trees as pitch issues from pine trees, 

 and gum from our cherry and plum trees. In the Adirondack forests I 

 have seen guides and visitors collecting vials full of the aromatic resin 

 which issues from the fragrant balsam tree. Certain resins and gums of 

 commerce, as copal, anime, benzoe resin, niastix, and balsam, are collected 

 by making slits in the bark of trees so that the resin runs down in chan- 

 nels to the ground, where it hardens and is collected for transi)ortation. 

 Copal perhaps affords the best analogy between modern resins and the 

 ancient amber, because it comes nearest it, and, indeed, according to 

 Bereudt, may be considered its modern representative. One species of 

 copal belongs to the prehistoric world, but Berendt thinks that it did not 

 grow in the same native home with the amber tree, because the organic 

 inclusions of the two resins show no identity. 



The great amount of amber already collected gives but slight indica- 

 tion of the incalculable quantity that must have been secreted by the 

 amber pines of the Tertiary. The sunken storehouse thereof, the f ormer 



1 Amber : Its Origin and History as illustrated by the Geology of Samland, by Dr. O. 

 Zaddach, Professor in the University of Konigsberg. Quarterly Journal of Sciences, London, 

 1868, page 1(17. 



