188 Concerning Amber. [ March, 
stores of this interesting substance with a less pone fate in 
reserve for it. 
While the color of amber is generally yellow it occurs in all 
shades, from pure white to “black.” The Fadernian, from the 
wine of that name, was the favorite color among the Romans. 
Dice of the white variety are hardly distinguishable from ivory. 
At Constantinople a pipe-stem of the milk-white variety is 
prized by the Turks at from forty to a hundred dollars. The 
action of sulphuric acid on the yellow changes it to red. A 
beautiful specimen of green amber has been found on the Ameri- 
can coast. “Black amber,” which was a vexed question in the 
middle ages, returns to question us again to-day. Monsieur le 
Conte de Borch, in his letters from Sicily, within the last decade, 
says that “ black amber is common.” 
Stretter, the latest English authority on gems, also gives black 
amber; but a very careful analysis of the black amber which has 
recently been imported from Spain to be manufactured in New 
York, gives: Carbon, 82.57; hydrogen, 7.70; oxygen and nitro- 
gen, 9.08; ash, .65. A result so different from true amber, and 
on distillation yielding no succinic acid, is, therefore, not true 
amber, but either a superior variety of jet or a highly oxidized 
bitumen. In chemical composition it seems to occupy an inter- 
mediate position between cannel coal and torbanite. 
Subjected to the microscope, woody fibre is visible, replaced in 
part by resin. Its electric power is great, and admitting as it 
does of a remarkable polish, its lightness well adapts it for orna- 
mental purposes. 
Among the old accounts of journeyings in search of amber, 
we find the first mention of the Teutons asa race. As the search 
for an “ El Dorado” led to voyages of discovery in later times, 
so we find that voyages and pilgrimages to the land of amber 
were made dating back to 1500 years before Christ. Peschel 
says, “Preach aloud the fact that the migrations of na tons s 
depend on the existence of the substantial treasures of the earth. 
So this Prussian paradise had been visited by Pythias of Mas- 
silena four hundred years before Christ, also by Theophrastus, 
the naturalist and philosopher, and by Philomen, the Greek poet. 
Nero sent there his Roman knights, who brought back quanti- 
ties of amber to enrich his treasury, and a small image in this 
precious material was valued higher than a human slave. 
