AMBER. 
07 
which received such thick masses must have 
been profoundly deep ^ but again the sub¬ 
terranean forces exerted themselves, and 
I now beheld the bed of that ocean, forming 
a chain of mountains more than seven 
thousand feet in height. Nor had these 
antagonist forces been dormant, which are 
always at work, wearing dowm the surface of 
the land. Now all is utterly irreclaimable 
and desert; even the lichen cannot adhere 
to the stony casts of former trees.”* 
There are some fragments of the former 
history of the northern seas beautifully pre¬ 
served embalmed in amber. 
Wave-worn pieces of this resinous sub¬ 
stance are so numerous along the southern 
shores of the Baltic, as to form an important 
article of commerce, and to denote that 
immense forests must have existed on the 
land now forming the bosom of that sea. 
Amber is the resin of a fir tree, probably 
of one species alone, and that one now 
extinct, the Pinus succinifer. The foreign 
organic substances which it contains have 
I 
* Darwin’s Journal of Beagle Voyage, Cbap. xv. 
I 
