AMBER (GEDANITE) 553 



natural amber are flattened, elongated, and pressed out in a dendritic fashion in pressed 

 amber. " Flohmig " pressed amber is more like " flohmig-clear," in which turbid and clear 

 portions occur in parallel stripes. At the junction of the turbid and clear portions there is 

 to be observed in transmitted light a yellowish-red colour, which in reflected light and 

 against a dark background changes to blue. This appearance is very rare in natural amber, 

 and never seen at all in bastard or in clear natural amber. Moreover, in pressed amber the 

 clear and turbid portions are always sharply defined instead of merging imperceptibly the 

 one into the other, as in natural amber. In clear portions of pressed amber, too, there 

 are almost always to be seen small brownish patches and veins, and even if these are 

 absent the material is never glassy clear, but always exhibits clouds and streaks, such as are 

 seen when different liquids mix or when sugar dissolves in water. Many of the characters 

 of pressed amber are, of course, identical with those of natural amber, such, for example, as 

 hardness, high melting-point, marked tendency to develop frictional electricity, the giving 

 out of an aromatic odour when rubbed or burnt, and the difficult solubility in the liquids 

 mentioned above. 



Between 600 and 700 hundredweights of pressed amber is now produced annually, and 

 the material fetches from 25s. to 30s. per pound. It is used chiefly in the manufacture of 

 cheap articles for the use of of smokers, and recently in the manufacture of beads for 

 exportation to Africa. It can be worked in precisely the same way as natural amber. 



In the foregoing account the chief consideration has been given to the true Baltic 

 amber, known to mineralogists as succinite. Being an almost exclusively German 

 product it has been dealt with in considerable detail ; it may also be stated here that owing 

 to the amber-working industry being essentially a German trade, many of the trade terms 

 quoted above have no equivalent in the English language. On the south-east coast of 

 England a few pieces of amber arc occasionally picked up. Besides the Baltic amber 

 there are numerous other resins of a similar nature and applied to similar purposes, which 

 may be included in the term amber used in its widest sense. They differ from amber 

 proper in many of their characters, especially in the absence of succinic acid, and for 

 this reason they have latterly been distinguished by mineralogists from succinite by 

 special names. From a commercial point of view they are quite unimportant, but as 

 they are of local interest in the places at which they occur the most important will be 

 briefly described below. 



GEDANITE. 



Several other resins accompany succinite, but only one, gedanite, is suitable for 

 ornamental purposes. It is known to amber-workers as " brittle,"" " friable " or " unripe '' 

 amber, and is usually transparent, or, at any rate, strongly translucent, and of a clear 

 wine-yellow colour, rarely dirty yellow and opaque. Most of the pieces have the 

 appearance of having been rounded and rubbed, and are dusted over with a snow-white 

 powder, which can be wiped off". There is no succinic acid in gedanite, and hence the 

 fumes given off^ when the substance is burnt are not irritating, although the smell is very 

 like that of burning amber. The melting-point is about 140° C, being thus lower than that 

 of amber, but higher than that of copal. Its hardness, H = l2— 2, is less than that of 

 amber. Its solubility is much the same, but gedanite is more easily attacked by oil of 

 turpentine than is amber. When rubbed it acquires a strong charge of negative electricity, 

 when it attracts to itself scraps of paper and other light bodies. 



Owing to its great brittleness gedanite does not compar^ favourably with amber as 

 a workable material. It is true that it can be turned on the lathe to any desired form, 



