284 COSMOS. 



a coniferous tree, which, to judge by the still extant remama 

 of the wood and the bark at different ages, approaches very 

 nearly to our white and red pines, although forming a distinct 

 species. The amber-tree of the ancient world {Pijzites succi- 

 fer) abounded in resin to a degree far surpassing that mani- 

 lested by any extant coniferous tree ; for not only were large 

 masses of amber deposited in and upon the bark, but also iu 

 the wood itself, following the course of the medullary rays, 

 which, together with ligneous cells, are still discernible under 

 the microscope, and peripherally between the rings, being some 

 times both yellow and white." 



" Among the vegetable forms inclosed in amber are male 

 and female blossoms of our native needle-v/ood trees and Cupu- 

 liferjB, while fragments which are recos^nized as belonoiuor tc 

 thuia, cupressus, ephedera, and castania vesca, blended wdtk 

 those of junipers and firs, indicate a vegetation difierent fronr 

 that of the coasts and plains of the Baltic. "=^ 



We have now passed through the whole series of formationa 

 comprised in the geological portidn of the present work, pro- 

 ceeding from the oldest erupted rock and the most ancient sed- 

 imentary formations to the alluvial land on which are scat- 

 tered those large masses of rock, the causes of whose general 

 distribution have been so long and variously discussed, and 

 which are, in my opinion, to be ascribed rather to the pene- 

 tration and violent outpouring of pent-up waters by the eleva- 

 tion of mountain chains than to the motion of floating blocks 

 of ice.f The most ancient structures of the transition forma- 



* [The forests of ambcr-piiie?, Pinites succifer, were iu the southeast- 

 ei'n part of what is now the bed of the Baltic, iu about .5.5° N. lat., 

 and 37° E. long. The different colors of amber are derived from local 

 chemical admixture. The amber contains fragments of vegetable mat- 

 ter, and from these it has been ascertained that the amber-pine forests 

 contained four other species of pine (besides the Pinites succifer), sev- 

 eral cypresses, yews, and jiuiipers, with ouks, poplars, beeches, &c. — 

 altogether forty-eight species of trees and shrubs, constituting a flora 

 of North American character. There are also some ferns, mosses, fungi, 

 and liverworts. See Professor Goppert, Geo/. Trans., I'Si^b. Insects, spi- 

 ders, small crustaceans, leaves, and fragments of vegetable tissue, are 

 imbedded in some of the masses. Upward of 800 species of insects 

 have been observed; most of them belong to species, and even genera, 

 that appear to be distinct from any now known, but others are nearly 

 related to indigenous species, and some are identical with existing forms, 

 that inhabit mjre southern climes. — Wonders of Geology, vol. i., p. 242, 

 &c.]— Tr. 



+ Leopold von Buch, iu the Ahhandl. der Akad. der Wissensch . zu 

 Berlin, 1814-15, s. 161 ; and in Poggend., Annalen. bd. ix.. s. 57-'» • '''i** 

 de Pu'uumout, in the Annales des Sciences Nalnrelles, t. xi.\., p. 0^ 



