G02 
Pinus montana.^'- Of these the resin is found, very little altered. 
True Amber is the product of a different Conifer, — the extinct 
Pinifes sucaiiiifer, Goepp., — which we have no reason to believe 
survived to so late a period as the Newer Pliocene. t The absence 
of this tree, and also the occurrence of large quantities of rolled 
jet associated with the Amber, lead one to think that in the 
Cromer Forest-bed, they are both merely present as worn fragments 
washed out of an older and underlying deposit, j; 
After long searching unsuccessfully for other evidence of the 
geological age of the Norfolk Amber, a specimen placed in my 
hands a few months ago seems to indicate that the Amber-bearing 
bed is probably the same as— perhaps even nearly continuous with— 
the well-known deposit on the Prussian coast. Though three or 
four pounds weight of Amber are annually gathered near Cromer, 
included insects are extremely rare. Continued inquiry has only 
resulted in the tracing of four specimens, two of which cannot 
now be found. The third was picked up on the beach about a 
year ago by Mr. William Mayes, of Church Street, Cromer, in 
whose possession it still is. It is a clear Avine-coloured piece, con- 
taining well-preserved specimens of the larvae of Aphis, a cast skin 
of a Spider, and a Ghrysotus, considered by Mr. G. H. Verrall to 
show characters found in some of the extinct Baltic forms. A 
fourth specimen, from Yarmouth beach, kindly lent me quite 
recently by Mr. A. S. Foord, F. G.S., is also transparent and wine- 
coloured, and contains three flies. Two of these Mr. Verrall — 
who I must thank for his examination of the specimens — refers to 
the genus Leici, both probably belonging to the same species j the 
third he refers with doubt to Gecidomyia. 
Unfortunately, Loew, who studied the Diptera of the Baltic 
Amber, appears never to have published his species, all the informa- 
tion he supplies being, that he knows twenty-six distinct species of 
Amber Leia, and so on with other genera, without giving either 
names or descriptions. § Mr. Verrall believes that the descriptions 
were contained in a manuscript work never published. Under these 
circumstances, nothing further can be done in the identification ot 
* See Saporta, ‘ Le Monde des Plantes ’ (1879), p. 349. 
i- See Goeppert and Menge, ‘ Die Flora des Bernsteins’ (4to). 
X See also Reid, ‘ Geology of Cromer,’ p. 133. 
§ Loew, ' Ueberden Bernstein und die Bernsteinfauna ’ (Meseritz, 1850). 
