494 COSMOS. 



JEstii on the Baltic, owed its origin to the daring per- 

 severance of Phoenician coasting traders. Its subsequent 

 extension affords a remarkable example in the history of the 

 contemplation of the universe, of the influence which may be 

 exercised on the establishment of international intercourse, 

 and on the extension of the knowledge of large tracts of land, 

 by a predilection for even a single product. In the same 

 manner as the Phocaean Massillians conveyed British tin 

 through the whole extent of Gaul to the shores of the Rhone, 

 amber passed from people to people through Germany and 

 the territory of the Celts, on both sides of the Alps, to the 

 Padus, and through Pannoriia to the Borysthenes. This in- 

 trade along the whole coast of Skage, as far as the Netherlands, Wer- 

 lauff, Bidrag til den nordisTce Ravhandels Historic (Kopenh. 1835). In 

 Tacitus, and not in Pliny, we find the first acquaintance with the gles- 

 sum of the shores of the Baltic, in the land of the jEstui (^Estuorum 

 gentium), and of the Yenedi, concerning whom the great philologist Shaf- 

 farik (Slawische Alteritiumer, th. i. s. 151-165), is uncertain whether 

 they were Slaves or Germani. The more active direct connection with 

 the Samland coast of the Baltic, and with the Esthonians, by means of the 

 overland route through Pannonia, by Carmmtum, which was first fol- 

 lowed by a Eoman knight under Nero, appears to me to have belonged 

 to the later times of the Eoman Caesars ( V oigt, Gesch. Preusseris, bd. i. 

 B. 85). The relations between the Prussian coasts and the Greek colo- 

 nies on the Black Sea are proved by fine coins, struck probably before the 

 eighty-fifth Olympiad, which have been recently found in the Netz dis- 

 trict (Lewezow, in the AWiandl. der Berl. Akad. der Wiss. aus dem 

 Jahr 1833, s. 181-224). The electron, the sun-stone of the very 

 ancient mythus of the Eridanus (Plin. xxxvii. cap. 2), the amber stranded 

 or buried on the coast, was, no doubt, frequently brought to the south, 

 both by land and by sea, from very different districts. The " amber 

 -which was found buried at two places in Scythia was, in part, very dark- 

 coloured." Amber is still collected near Kaltschedansk, not far from 

 Kamensk, on the Ural; and we have obtained, at Katharinenburg, 

 fragments imbedded in lignite. See G. Kose, Reise nach dem Ural, 

 bd. i. s. 481; and Sir Koderick Murchison, in the Geology of Russia, 

 -vol. i. p. 366. The petrified wood which frequently surrounds the amber 

 had early attracted the attention of the ancients. This resin, which was, 

 at that time, regarded as so precious a product, was ascribed either to 

 the black poplar (according to the Chian Scymnus, v. 396, p. 367, 

 Letronne), or to a tree of the cedar or pine genus (according to Mithri- 

 dates, in Plin. xxxvii. cap. 2 and 3). The recent admirable investiga- 

 tions of Prof. Goppert, at Breslau, have shown that the conjecture of the 

 Roman collector was the more correct. Respecting the petrified amber- 

 tree (Pinitessuccinifer) belonging to an extinct vegetation, see Berendt 

 Organische Reste im Bernstein, bd. i. abth. 1, 1845, s. 89. 



