370 Dr. Thomas on the Amber Beds of East Prussia. 



the diluvial mass of the plain which extends from the Carpathian 

 mountains. As such it is represented in the older geological 

 maps of Germany. A threefold deposit of blue clay and white 

 sand characterizes the formation ; whether the occurrence of 

 marine remains of an extinct world, which could scarcely have 

 escaped the eye of an attentive observer, would have established 

 its tertiaiy character, may in the absence of proper information 

 be the rather neglected, since it is not my object to write a 

 learned treatise. Little attention has been paid to them, and in 

 the most recent work* which has touched expressly on the geo- 

 logical relations of the amber districts, they have been altogether 

 neglected, and in fact, like the lignite which occurs near the 

 amber, regarded merely as its accidental attendants. 



Fossil wood, both perfectly petrified and in a peculiar state of 

 decomposition from exposure to the weather, is so frequent on 

 this coast, that it cannot have escaped observation. The con- 

 tinual changes to which the coast is exposed, from the influence 

 of atmospheric variations, often bring to light enormous trunks 

 of trees, which the common people had long regarded as the 

 trunks of the amber-tree, before the learned declared that 

 they were the stems of palm-trees, and in consequence deter- 

 mined the position of Paradise to be on the coast of East 

 Prussia. Some years since a fir-branch with well-preserved 

 cones was said to have been found in the Hubenik amber-tracts, 

 together with palm-nuts, for which the fossil fruit of a kind of 

 walnut was mistaken ; this however, to the regret of the scientific, 

 has so completely vanished, that its existence might almost be 

 considered a fable. I was therefore the more surprised when, in 

 the summer of 1829, I found two well-preserved fossil fir-cones 

 in the hills along the coast at Rauschen, which the rain had 

 washed out of their natural position. Although they were 

 regarded, by those of my neighbours whose opinion was asked, 

 as recent fir-cones, which may have been derived from the forests 

 which formerly clothed the shores, I was myself, in consequence 

 of their peculiar appearance, far from convinced of this, and I 

 applied with fresh zeal to the investigation of the locality when 

 I returned after many years' absence. Continued researches 

 were soon rewarded with a collection of fossil cones, which for 

 number and beautiful state of preservation would have graced any 

 collection. I convinced myself besides most clearly, that the line of 

 coast from Lapohn beyond Rauschen, Georgswald and Warnik 

 almost to Grosskuhren consists of regularly alternate beds of blue 

 clay and white sand running parallel with the surface of the sea, 



* Die im Bernstein befindlichen organischen Reste der Vorwelt heraus- 

 gegeb. von Dr. George Carl Berendt, in Com. d. Nicolaischen Buchhdlg. 

 Berlin, 1845. 



