AMBER
AMBER is not unfrequently picked up among the pebbles of the East
Coast. I once picked up a piece on the beach at Felixstowe as big
as a turkey's egg, thinking it was an ordinary flint-pebble and
intending to throw it into the sea, when my attention was arrested
by its extraordinary lightness, and I found that I had got hold of
an unusually large lump of amber. There is a locality where amber
occurs in considerable quantity. It is a long way off--namely, the
promontory called Samland near Königsberg on the Prussian shore of
the Baltic. There it occurs with fossil wood and leaves in strata of
early Tertiary age, deposited a little later than our "London clay."
It used to be merely picked up on the shore there until recent times,
when "mining" for it was started. From this region (the Baltic coast
of Prussia) amber was carried by the earliest traders in prehistoric
times to various parts of Europe. Their journeyings can be traced
by the discovery of amber beads in connexion with interments and
dwelling-places along what are called "amber routes" radiating from
the amber coast of Prussia. To reach the East Coast of England the
bits of amber would have to be carried by submarine currents. Amber
travels faster and farther than ordinary stones, on account of its
lightness. What has been held to be amber is found, also embedded in
ancient Tertiary strata, in small quantity in France, in Sicily, in
Burma, and in green sand (below the chalk) in the United States. The
Sicilian amber (called "Simetite") was not known to the ancients: it is
remarkable for being "fluorescent," as is also some recently discovered
in Southern Mexico. But it is possible that chemically these substances
are not quite the same as true amber. Amber is a fossil resin or
gum, similar to that exuded by many living trees, such as gum-copal.
It has been used as an ornament from prehistoric times onwards, and
was greatly valued by the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and by our
Anglo-Saxon ancestors, not only for decorative purposes, but as a
"charm," it being supposed to possess certain magical properties.
Amber (it is generally believed) comes slowly drifting along the sea
bottom to the Suffolk shore from the Baltic. Lumps as big as one's
fist are sometimes picked up here. The largest pieces on record found
on the Baltic shore, or dug out of the mines there, are from 12 to 18
lb. in weight, and valued at £1000. A party sent by the Emperor Nero
brought back 13,000 lb. of amber from the Baltic shores to Rome. The
bottom currents of seas and oceans, such as those which possibly bring
amber to our shores, are strangely disposed. The Seigneur of Sark
some fifty years ago was shipwrecked in his yacht near the island of
Guernsey; he lost, among other things, a well-fastened, strongly-made
chest, containing silver plate. It was found a year later in deep water
off the coast of Norway and restored to him! In the really deep sea,
over 1000 fathoms down, there are well-marked broad currents which
may be described as rivers of very cold water (only four degrees or
so above freezing-point). They flow along the deep sea bottom and are
sharply marked off from the warmer waters above and to the side. Their
inhabitants are different from those of the warmer water. They are
due to the melting of the polar ice, the cold water so formed sinking
at once owing to its greater density below the warmer water of the
surface currents. These deep currents originate in both the Arctic and
Antarctic regions, and the determination of their force and direction,
as well as of those of other ocean currents, both deep and superficial,
such as the warm "Gulf Stream," which starts from the Gulf of Mexico,
and the great equatorial currents, is a matter of constant study and
observation, in which surveying ships and skilled observers have been
employed.
Amber has not only been valued for its beauty of colour--yellow,
flame-colour, and even deep red and sometimes blue--for its
transparency, its lightness, and the ease with which it can be carved,
but also on account of certain magical properties attributed to it.
Pliny, the great Roman naturalist of the first century A.D., states
that a necklace of amber beads protects the wearer against secret
poisoning, sorcery, and the evil eye. It is first mentioned by Homer,
and beads of it were worn by prehistoric man. Six hundred years B.C., a
Greek observer (Thales) relates that amber when rubbed has the power of
attracting light bodies. That observation is the starting-point of our
knowledge of electricity, a name derived from the Greek word for amber,
"electron." In Latin, amber is called "succinum." By heating in oil
or a sand-bath, amber can be melted, and the softened pieces squeezed
together to form larger masses. It can also be artificially stained,
and cloudy specimens are rendered transparent by heating in an oil-bath.
Amber is the resinous exudation of trees like the "Copal gum" of East
Africa and the "Kauri resin" or "Dammar" of New Zealand. Both of these
products are very much like amber in appearance, and can be readily
mistaken for it. The trees which produced the amber of the Baltic were
conifers or pine trees, and flourished in early Tertiary times (many
millions of years ago). Their leaves, as well as insects of many kinds,
which have been studied and named by entomologists, are found preserved
in it. There is a very fine collection of these insects in the Natural
History Museum in London. It is probable that more than one kind of
tree produced the amber-gum, and that its long "fossilization" has
resulted in some changes in its density and its chemical composition.
The East African copal is formed by a tree which belongs to the same
family as our beans, peas, and laburnum. It is obtained when freshly
exuded, but the best kind is dug by the negroes out of the ground,
where copal trees formerly grew and have left their remains, so that
copal, like amber, is to a large extent fossilized. The same is true
of the New Zealand dammar or kauri gum, which is the product of a
conifer called "Agathis australis," and is very hard and amber-like
in appearance. Chemically amber, copal, and dammar are similar to one
another but not identical. Amber, like the other two, has been used for
making "varnish," and the early Flemish painters in oils, as well as
the makers of Cremona violins, made use of amber varnish.
A medicament called "eau de luce" was formerly used, made by dissolving
one of the products of the dry distillation of amber (called "oil
of amber") in alcohol. Now, however, amber is used only for two
purposes--besides decoration--namely, for the mouthpieces of pipes and
cigar tubes and for burning (for amber, like other resins, burns with
a black smoke and agreeable odour) as a kind of incense (especially at
the tomb of Mahomet at Mecca). These uses are chiefly Oriental, and
most European amber now goes to the East. In China they use a fine
sort of amber, obtained from the north of Burma. The use of amber as
a mouthpiece is connected with its supposed virtues in protecting the
mouth against poison and infection. It is softer than the teeth, and
therefore pleasant to grip with their aid; but as a cigar or cigarette
tube it is disadvantageous, as it does not absorb the oil which is
formed by the cooling of the tobacco smoke passing along it, but allows
it to condense as an offensive juice.
Forty years ago an old lady used to sit in the doorway of her
timber-built cottage in the village of Trimley (where there are the
churches of two parishes in one churchyard), smoking a short clay pipe
and carving bits of amber found on the Suffolk beach into the shape of
hearts, crosses, and beads. She would carve and polish the amber you
had found yourself whilst you joined her in a friendly pipe. You were
sure in those days of the genuine character of the amber, jet, and
agate sold as "found on the beach." Nowadays these things, as well as
polished agates and "pebbles from the beach," are, I am sorry to say,
manufactured in Germany, and sent to many British seaside resorts,
like the false coral and celluloid tortoise-shell which, side by side
with the genuine articles, are offered by picturesque Levantines to
the visitors at hotels on the Riviera, and even in Naples itself.
Nevertheless, genuine and really fine specimens of amber picked up on
the beach and polished so as to show to full advantage their beautiful
colour and "clouding" can still be purchased in the jeweller's shop
at Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast near the great pebble beach of
Orfordness.
There are difficulties about using the word "amber" with scientific
precision. The fossil resins which pass under this name in commerce,
and are obtained in various localities, including the Prussian mines on
the Baltic, are undoubtedly the product of several different kinds of
trees, and, from the strictly scientific chemical point of view, they
are mixtures in varying proportions of different chemical substances.
The merchant is content with a certain hardness (which he tests with a
penknife), transparency, and colour, and also attaches great importance
to the test of burning a few fragments in a spoon, when, if the
material is to pass as "amber," it should give an agreeable perfume.
Scientifically speaking, "amber" differs from other "resins," including
copal, in having a higher melting point, greater hardness, slighter
solubility in alcohol and in ether, and in containing "succinic acid"
as an important constituent, which the other resins, even those most
like it, do not. True amber thus defined is called "succinite," but
several other resins accompany it even as found in its classical
locality--the Baltic shore of Prussia--and, owing to their viscid
condition before fossilization, may have become mixed with it. One of
these is called "gedanite," and is used for ornamental purposes. It is
more brittle than amber, and contains no succinic acid. It is usually
clear and transparent, and of a pale wine-yellow colour.
It is not possible to be certain about the exact nature of what
appears to be a "piece of amber" thrown up on the seashore, without
chemical examination. A year or two ago a friend brought to me a dark
brownish-yellow-coloured piece of what looked like amber, which
(so my friend stated) had been picked up on the shore at Aldeburgh.
It was as big as three fingers of one's hand, very transparent and
fibrous-looking, owing to the presence of fine bubbles in its substance
arranged in lines. I found an exactly similar piece from the same
locality in the collection of the Natural History Museum. It was
labelled "copal," and, I suppose, had been chemically ascertained to be
that resin and not "amber," or, to use the correct name, "succinite."
How either of these pieces got into the North Sea it is difficult to
say. Though the "copal" of commerce is obtained from the West Coast of
Africa, it may occur (though I have not heard that it does) associated
with true amber in Prussia. A fossilized resin very similar to copal
is found in the London clay at Highgate and elsewhere near London, and
is called "copalite." It is possible, though not probable, that the
bits of amber found on our East Coast beaches are derived from Tertiary
beds, now broken up and submerged in the North Sea, and do not travel
to us all the way from the Baltic.