542 SYSTEMATIC DESCRIPTION OF PRECIOUS STONES 



are strewn over the sea-floor and hinder this operation are sometimes hauled up, and utiHsed 

 as building stone, a desideratum in this part of the country. The amount of amber 

 wedged in between such boulders makes their removal quite worth while. A large amount 

 of amber has been obtained in this way among other places in the neighbourhood of 

 Briisterort, on the north-west corner of Samland, where, after the removal of the boulders, 

 the amber was raked up with drag-nets. Amber is obtained in this way on the coast of 

 Samland only ; the method has been tried, but unsuccessfully, on the coasts of West 

 Prussia ; the amber obtained here consists exclusively of that picked up on the shore or 

 drawn from the sea. 



The methods for the winning of amber hitherto described are all somewhat primiti\e, 

 but the more rational method of diving has been adopted more recently and has yielded a 

 rich harvest. The pioneers of this method were Stantien and Becker, a large firm of 

 amber merchants at Konigsberg, and since 1869 the amber lying loose on or embedded in 

 the sea-floor has been collected by divers furnished with every modern appliance. The 

 sea-floor in the neighbourhood of Briisterort and the village of Gross-Dirschkeim to the 

 east was first explored, and after the exhaustion of these supplies, a spot further south near 

 Palmnicken was worked. At the present day, however, even this method is given up by 

 reason of the vastly richer yield afforded by mining operations, but before passing to the 

 consideration of the latter, the operations of dredging and of surface digging for amber 

 must be described. 



Dredging for amber is performed not in the open sea, but solely in the Kurisches 

 Haff", and is undertaken only by the firm just mentioned. The floor of this lagoon near the 

 village of Schwarzort, a little to the south of Memel on the Kurische Nehrung consists of a 

 bed of alluvium very rich in amber. Towards the east the same bed rises above sea-level 

 and near Prokuls is extensively worked in diggings. Dredging for amber was commenced in 

 1860, and this year marked a turning-point in the amber-winning industry, for whereas, up 

 to that date the amber markets were supplied mainly with sea-amber, the supplies 

 subsequently consisted almost entirely of dredged amber. The latter also is free from 

 cracks and fissures and from the weathered crust, and, indeed, differs in no essential respect 

 from sea-amber. The work was commenced with three small hand-dredgers and was not at 

 first very successful ; when the right spot was found, the undertaking developed to quite an 

 unexpected extent, and so large steam-dredgers provided with powerful machinery were 

 brought into requisition. The floor of the lagoon was excavated to a depth of from 7 to 

 11 metres, and about half the annual production of East Prussian amber was obtained in 

 this way. The industry gave employment to about 1000 workpeople, and incidentally 

 led to a great development of the small fishing village of Schwarzort. The deposits in the 

 lagoon are now exhausted and no dredging has been done since the end of November 

 1890. 



Besides being picked up on the shore, drawn from the sea, and raked or dredo-ed up 

 from the sea-floor, amber has been obtained since ancient times in diggings both on the 

 shore and inland. The amber thus obtained, the so-called pit-amber, differs from sea-amber 

 in that it is enveloped in a thick weathered crust and is much cracked and fissured, though 

 these flaws are not visible on the exterior owing to the crust. Not only in East Prussia 

 but also in all parts of the district where it occurs, digging for amber in the glacial and 

 alluvial deposits and in the Tertiary strata is carried on. Formerly the amount of material 

 obtained in this way was small compared with that collected from the sea, but now these 

 conditions are reversed. Since the year 1873 specially large supplies of amber have been 

 obtained from a greyish-green sandy clay, the so-called " blue earth," an amber-bearing 



