160 OBTAINING AMBER. 
Whether new stores of amber are now being formed, or 
whether, like coal, it was the result of causes not now in 
operation, is an unsolved problem. The specimens obtained 
differ considerably ; some are pale as primrose, some deep 
orange or almost brown; some nearly as transparent as crys- 
tal, some nearly opaque. Large pieces, uniform in color and 
translucency, fetch high prices; and there are fashions in 
this matter for which it is not easy to account,—seeing that 
the Turks and other Orientals buy up, at prices which Euro- 
peans are unwilling to give, all the specimens presenting a 
straw-yellow color and a sort of cloudy translucency. The 
Russians, on the contrary, prefer orange-yellow transparent 
specimens. The amber is seldom obtained by actual mining. 
It is usually found on sea-coasts, after storms, in rounded 
nodules; or, if scarce on shore, it is sought for by men clad 
in leather garments, who wade up to their necks in the sea, 
and scrape the sea-bottom with hooped nets attached to the 
end of long poles; 
or (rather danger- 
ous work) men go 
out in boats, and 
examine the faces 
of precipitous cliffs, 
picking off, by 
means of iron 
hooks, the lumps 
of amber which 
they may see here 
SEARCHING FOR AMBER. and there. Some. 
times a piecé 
weighing nearly a pound is found, and a weight of even ten 
pounds is recorded. As small pieces can easily be joined 
by smoothing the surfaces, moistening them with linseed oil, 
and pressing them together over a charcoal fire, and as gum 
copal is sometimes very like amber, there is much sophistica- 
tion indulged in, which none but an expert can guard against. 
In fashioning the nodules of amber, whether genuine or 
t 
