1880. | Concerning Amber. 181 
nearly the same name is given for amber, signifying cluster or 
mass, The first Greek name applied to it was a term signifying 
the rays of the sun, either from the color or some relation to the 
sun god. The popular Greek name was é/ectron, or the attractor, 
and thus our substance can boast of having added a word to 
nearly every language, as even the mother-tongue-loving Germans 
find e/ectrita¢ more euphonious than their harsher synonym, 
bernsteinkraftigungristzeug. 
Italy, Spain, France, Switzerland and England are given as 
amber-producing countries, but it must not be forgotten that 
under this name are included many fossil resins, the differences 
in which have as yet been hardly determined. In Lemburg, in 
the Tertiary sandstone, with giant oysters, a splendid amber is 
found in immensely large pieces, clearer than the Prussian, and 
producing a most delightful odor when burnt. 
In the pitch coal of Bohemia, Reutz found specimens contin 
ing sulphur, and also with the foraminifera of the Vienna Ter- 
tiary. Daubré found amber in Alsace, and Schubert in the Alps, 
but these were of a different quality from that of the Baltic sea. 
But there is no doubt that this amber conifer forest reached from 
Holland over the German coast, through Siberia and Kamtschatka 
even to North America, and from the abundance of amber found 
in some localities, those conifers must have been as productive as 
is at present the Dammara australis of New Zealand, the twigs 
and branches of which are so laden with white resin as ‘to have 
the appearance of being covered with icicles. 
One of the great deposits-of amber is in the rie pope 
where on the plains of Pomerania the peasants dig in the su 
clay for it. In the vicinity of Brandenburg, pieces have been 
found weighing four pounds. 
rom this abundance of amber in the drift clay and also from 
the fact that branches of “ arbor vite” ( Thuja occidentalis) occur : 
in the Baltic amber, and have been found in the stomach of the 
Mastodon in the United States, Goppert concluded that the | 
“ Diluvial,” or time of the mammoth in the old world and masto- 
don in the new, was the age of amber. 
This theory has since been entirely disproved. a : 
By far the most celebrated locality for its richness in amber, on 
and one which still possesses great stores of this valuable fossil, 
is the peninsula of Samland--a petia of Prussia aont san 
rounded by the Balti tic sea. Pane 
