1896. ENGLISH AMBER AND AMBER GENERALLY. 103 



fossil is said to occur rarely in the Cambridge Greensand, which 

 belongs to the Cenomanian, and for this reason I am much indebted 

 to the British Museum for having given me a small piece for examina- 

 tion. This has shown that the Cambridge amber is softer and more 

 brittle than succinite, and that its chemical qualities are different. 

 For the results of an analysis by Mr. O. Helm, at Danzig, show 

 that 0.3 grms. of it produce, by dry distillation, only 0.006 grams of 

 hydrated succinic acid, corresponding to 0.005 grams anhydrous succinic 

 acid, which means 1.66 per cent. Thus the Cambridge Greensand 

 amber differs from succinite not only in its geological age but also in 

 its physical and chemical characters. To this fact I wish to draw 

 the attention of English geologists and botanists, who would be able 

 to obtain larger quantities of this amber, and who should specially 

 notice any enclosures of vegetable and animal remains in it. 



Succinite proper, then, has been found, in England, hitherto only 

 on the east coast from Essex to Yorkshire. Probably that is the 

 most western locality of succinite in general, though I certainly re- 

 member in the Zoological Department of the State Museum at Stock- 

 holm a pretty large piece of succinite, covered with bryozoa and 

 tubicolous annelids, and perforated by Pholas cnneifovmis, Say, 

 which species only occurs on the south-east coast of the United 

 States and in the West Indies. It was labelled " Atlantic," but what 

 locality may be meant by that, and in what way it may have got 

 there, remains uncertain. 



Pieces of succinite, as well as all other organic and inorganic 

 things which are placed for some time in the sea, may be covered 

 with small living marine plants and animals, such as Algae, Bryozoa, 

 and Crustacea. But as these are not quite the same in the German 

 Ocean as in the Baltic, English succinite bears an external flora 

 and fauna partially different from the Prussian. Previously, Mr. 

 Foord in his above-named paper occasionally mentioned a small 

 unpolished specimen of the opaque sort " encrusted with a polyzoan," 

 that is to say, with a bryozoon. On the other hand, I know that the 

 shells of a kind of Balanus often cover the fossil resin, and Dr. 

 Weltner, of ihe Zoological Museum at Berlin, has determined it to be 

 B. porcatus, da Costa. For instance, Mrs. A. Fox, of Cromer, pos- 

 sesses a hght-yellow clouded piece of succinite (plate i., fig. i), 75 

 grams in weight, which is covered with the shells of several animals, 

 the largest of which has a diameter of 3 to 3.3 cm., while other 

 specimens have fallen off. According to Dr. Weltner this species 

 lives on the coasts of Japan, North East America, Greenland, Ireland, 

 Scotland, South England, Norderney, Heligoland, and in the whole 

 of the German Ocean, also in the Greater Belt, in the Belt of 

 Fehmarn, and at the Stoller Ground, near Kiel. It maybe mentioned 

 that amber from the shores of West and East Prussia is also often 

 incrusted with smaller shells, which belong to another species, Balanus 

 improvisus, Darw. Moreover, one and the same English specimen 



