14 
water before they were embedded in their clayey matrix. 
Pieces of fossil wood are also associated with the Amber, when 
any Amber isattached to the wood itself it is often so completely 
penetrated by it, that it has the appearance of Amber filaments. 
The following fossil shells occur in the Amber earth, at the 
bottom of the quicksand, and in the overlying ferruginous 
(Glauconite) sandstone, viz:—a species of Ostrea, Cardium 
Pectunculus, Natica, Spatangus, Scutella, and Echinus, and 
a crab, and abundant remains of Escharaand Cellepora. These 
fossils determine the age of this Tertiary formation to be the 
Eocene, or oldest period. The Amber itself it is evident, was 
derivate and washed down probably by floods from the land 
on which the Amber trees grew, into the sea and there de- 
posited with the marine remains which are now associated with 
it, although it seems probable that the land was not very far 
from the shore where it was abundant. Above and below the 
Amber earth only a few isolated pieces of Amber occur. In 
the southern deposit the Amber earth is thicker, 20 feet at 
least, and composed of two different layers, but here only the 
upper ‘Amber earth’ and the ‘green sand’ agree with the 
northern formation. The former is also further distinguished 
from the latter, by containing no other fossils except sharks’ 
teeth which occur in the ‘ Amber bed, ’and by more abundant 
pieces of Amber in the overlying strata. Professor Zaddach 
also has proved that the Tertiary Glauconite was derived 
from the green sand of the older Cretaceous formation, the 
younger beds of which constitute a part of the Danish island 
of Bornholm. He also shows that the trees which yielded 
the Amber must have grown upon the Greensand beds of 
the Cretaceous period, flourishing luxuriantly on the marshy 
coast which then surrounded the great continent of Northern 
Europe. Probably the temperature was then much higher 
than it is now, and this even at that epoch extended to the 
