153 
With equal elegance he notices the ant and the bee, entombed 
with similar splendour : 
Dum Pheathontea formica vagatur in umbra, 
Implicuit tenuem succlna gutta feram. 
Sic, modo quae fuerat vita contempta manente, 
Funeribus facta est nunc pretiosa suis. lib. iv. epigr. 15. 
Et latet, et lucet Pheathontide condita gutta 
Ut videatur apis nectare clausa suo. 
Dignum tantorum pretium tulit ilia laborum : 
Credibile est ipsam sic voluisse mori. lib. iv. epigr. 32. 
The celebrated Breynius transmitted, about the year 1665, to the 
Royal Society of London, an account of a curious piece of amber 
which had fallen under his observation*. .This specimen was shewn 
to him by an Englishman, a Dantzic merchant, of the name of 
Benlows, who valued it at thirty guineas. It was of an oval com- 
pressed figure, about two inches and a quarter long, about half that 
measure in width, and a quarter of an inch in thickness; of that 
colour, described by Pliny, resembling Falernian wine, and exceed- 
ingly fair and clear, not having the least mark from which any sus- 
picion of fraud could arise. It contained through its whole length 
an extended leaf of the pinnated kind, yielding a beautiful object 
shining with a golden splendour, from the various refractions and 
reflections which the rays of light suffered from the surrounding 
medium. The leaf was not perfect, but mutilated at each extremity, 
and was formed by five pair of oblong and somewhat sharp-pointed 
pinnae, placed at nearly equal distances, and being in some places 
evidently eaten. What plant it belonged to he was however unable 
* Observatio de succina a Cleba, Plantse cujusdam Folio impraegnata rarissima. Auctore 
0““ Johanne Philippo Breynio, M. D. F. R. S. 
VOL. I. 
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