226 
In one specimen, which I possess, containing vegetable matters, 
the little fragments of moss, and the other particles which are so 
small as not to furnish the means of judging to what plants, or 
even to what parts of plants, they belong, do not appear to have 
suffered the least change, nor to have made the least approach to 
transparency, excepting one or two pieces, in which it may be 
readily accounted for, by their extreme thinness and natural prone- 
ness to pellucidness. Not having suffered that change, which this 
hypothesis supposes the containing mass to have undergone, it seems 
fair to conclude, that these matters must have been introduced after 
this particular process had been accomplished in the amber itself, 
and are therefore preserved, like the insects, in the same state as 
when first entombed. 
Let us not refuse instruction whenever it is offered to us, and 
especially when, by duly attending to it, we may escape the sus- 
pended lash, properly held in readiness to check the prompt and 
presumptive theorist. The specimen of amber to which I have 
alluded, besides substances decidedly vegetable, and others too 
equivocal to determine whether they are parts of vegetables or of 
insects, contains two flies. One of these appears to be in as perfect 
a state of preservation as when living; the legs being collected 
nearly in a point, and stretched to their length, as though the 
flowing bitumen had secured the imprisonment of the little captive, 
during its active exertions to raise himself from the treacherous 
surface. The other, on the contrary, appears to have lost its 
natural colours, and possesses very nearly the transparency, which is 
very considerable, of the amber itself ; as if it had undergone a 
similar change with the substance which contains it. If it had 
been a leaf instead of a fly, what would have become of our pro- 
posed hypothesis ? — But might it not have been only the thin and 
wasted remains of a dead fly, the transparency of which has been 
increased by its becoming filled by the bright and clear bitumen ? 
