Amber and Jki iv Ancikm Biriai.s. 107 



natoly in necklaces or other ornaments? How is it that in 

 dur own times still, we hear or read of Amber being- worn 

 for a particular purpose for luck, and used as a charm or 

 remedy in certain ills? The Managing- Director of Harrod's 

 Stores in London, Mr Richard Burbidge, has been good 

 enough to inform me that his firm sell Amber at the present 

 time^ set as a jewel, to prevent cold and for the cure of 

 rheumatism. 



It mig-ht be interesting in this paper first to see of what 

 niat^rials Amber and Jet are composed, and if there is any 

 cause which would account for such a great and mysterious 

 value being attached to these substances, also to show some 

 of the uses to which they were put from earliest times, and 

 to mention finds of them in various parts of Britain and 

 elsewhere, and more especially in Galloway, where articles 

 of Amber and Jet — but more especially Jet, or Lignite, as it 

 is often called — have been found in the interesting Neolithic 

 and Bronze Age burials so frequently met with. 



Amber. 



Aniber is a fossil resin or pitch, an exudation product, 

 principally of the Pimts succitiifer, a now extinct variety of 

 pine of the Tertiary period. It has been found in varying 

 amounts at numerous widely separated localities, but always 

 under conditions closely resembling one another. The 

 better known localities are the Prussian coast of the Baltic, 

 the coast of Norfolk, Essex, and Suffolk, and as far as Deal, 

 the coasts of Sweden, Denmark, and the Russian Baltic 

 provinces, in Galicia, Westphalia, Poland, Norway, Swit- 

 zerland, France, L'pper Burmah, Sicily, Mexico, the United 

 States at Martha's Vineyard and in New Jersey. Usually 

 the pieces found are small, but large ones sometimes occur 

 and one of the largest on record weighed i8 lbs., and is 

 now in the Berlin Museum. 



Amber comes now, as for thousands of years, mainly 

 from the Baltic, where it occurs in strata of Lignite-bearing 

 sands of Oligocene Age.^ Amber was in Greek " electron," 



1 The Xnn-Mefallic Minprnl'i. by George Merrill. 1904, p. 378. 



