153 



With equal elegance he notices the ant and the bee, entombed 

 with similar splendour : 



Dum Pheathontea FORMICA vagatur in umbra, 



Implicuit tenuem succina gutta feram. 

 Sic, modo quae fuerat vita contempta manente, 



Funeribus facta est nunc pretiosa suis. Lib. IV. Epigr. 15. 



Et latet, et lucet Pheathontide condita gutta 



Ut videatur APIS nectare clausa suo. 

 Dignum tantorum pretium tulit ilia laborum : 



Credibile est ipsam sic voluisse mori. Lib. IV. Epigr. 32. 



The celebrated Breynius transmitted, about the year 1665, to the 

 Royal Society of London, an account of a curious piece of amber 

 which had fallen under his observation*. This specimen was shewn 

 to him by an Englishman, a Dantzic merchant, of the name of 

 Benlows, who valued it at thirty guineas. It was of an oval com- 

 pressed figure, about two inches and a quarter long, about half that 

 measure in width, and a quarter of an inch in thickness ; of that 

 colour, described by Pliny, resembling Falernian wine, and exceed- 

 ingly fair and clear, not having the least mark from which any sus- 

 picion of fraud could arise. It contained through its whole length 

 an extended leaf of the pinnated kind, yielding a beautiful object, 

 shining with a golden splendour, from the various refractions 

 and reflections which the rays of light suffered from the surround- 

 ing medium. The leaf was not perfect, but mutilated at each 

 extremity, and was formed by five pair of oblong and somewhat 

 sharp-pointed pinna?, placed at nearly equal distances, and being 

 in some places evidently eaten. What plant it belonged to he was 



* Observatio de succine a Cleba, Plant cujusdam Folio imprcegnata rarissima. Auc- 

 tore D Jobanne Pbilippo Breynio, M.D. F.R.S. 



VOL. I. X 



