About the History and Properties of Amber

Although the ornamental uses of amber are to a great extent outside the realm of personal adornment, its conversion into beads, for necklaces especially, is of such ancient origin, and these ornaments have always been so favoured, that this fossil vegetable resin is, like the pearl and coral, included in the realm of gems which are, with these exceptions, and the diamond, which is carbon, purely mineral. Like the pearl and coral, amber is identified in the popular conception with the sea, from whence a small proportion of the amber acquired by man has been derived.

To use the words of Dr. Max Bauer: "This material, so much used for personal ornaments, is not strictly speaking a mineral at all, being of vegetable origin, and consisting of the more or less considerably altered resin of extinct trees. It resembles minerals in its occurrence in the beds of the earth's crust, and for that reason may be considered, like other varieties of fossil resin, of which it is the most important, as an appendix to minerals."

Archaeological discoveries reveal that amber was known to and favoured by prehistoric peoples, such as the Egyptians and cave-dwellers of Switzerland. Amber is believed to have been taken from the Baltic by the seafaring Phoenicians, and the old Greeks called it elektron, from whence comes our modern word electricity.

True amber--Succinum electrum (Dana)--the succinite of mineralogists, is the resin of a coniferous tree which was of the vegetable life of the Miocene age of the Tertiary period in geology. The late Professor Goeppert, of Breslau christened the principal amber-yielding tree the Pinites succinifer. The vegetable origin of amber has not been definitely established in science, but one of the evidences that it was a flowing vegetable resin, that is accepted as indisputable, is the oft-occurring presence in amber of insects, or parts of them, which must have been caught and imprisoned when the fresh resin was fluent. Wherever amber is found in the earth, it is in association with brown-coal or lignite.

Amber, or succinite, then, is a fossil resin occurring in irregular masses with no cleavage and having a conchoidal fracture. Colour yellow, some specimens reddish, brownish, whitish, or cloudy and occasionally fluorescent, with a blue or green tinge; hardness, 2 to 2.5; specific gravity, 1.05 to 1.09; brittle; lustre, resinous to waxy; transparent to opaque; negatively electrified by friction. Amber is inflammable with a rich yellow flame and it emits an aromatic odour; heated to 150 degrees C. it softens, and melts at about 250 degrees C. giving off dense white pungent fumes. In alcohol it is soluble. The chemical constituents of amber, in one hundred parts are: carbon 78.96, hydrogen 10.51, oxygen 10.52.

Amber is found on the Baltic, Adriatic, and Sicilian coasts; in France, China, India, and in North America.

Always within man's memory or knowledge, nodules of amber have been cast up on the shores of the Baltic Sea, especially along the Prussian coast, and their collection and sale has afforded a livelihood for the local inhabitants. This is called "sea stone," or "sea amber," and it is usually uniform and, being uncontaminated by associated substances, is superior in quality to that which is mined. This flotsam amber is often entangled in seaweed and this--called "scoop stone"--is collected in nets. In marshy spots, mounted men, called "amber riders," follow the ebbing tide and profitably search for the fossil resin thus exposed. The weight of amber being about the same as sea-water, agitation of the water containing it is sufficiently effective for its flotation. About 1860, it being evident to geologists that the sea-amber came from the strata underneath, it was sought on the adjacent terra firma by modern mining methods, and the operations have resulted in an established successful industry.