usage
in the East is justified by the prevalent belief that amber never will
allow the transmission of any infection. This of course would be a
highly valuable quality, but unfortunately there is nothing to prove
its existence.
Lumps
of amber are generally very small, but occasionally a piece is obtained
of considerable size; as, for example, a specimen of amber in the Royal
Museum at Berlin, which weighs 18 pounds.
Amber is wrought on the turner's lathe by steel instruments, and polished on a leaden wheel with pumice-stone and water.
JET.
Jet,
a beautiful black substance, is in point of fact a lignite produced by
the decomposition of resinous vegetation buried in the earth thousands
of ages before the historic times. Yet in mines of lignite jet is rare.
The
hardness, the fineness, and the compactness of its tissue probably
result from the peculiar nature of the trees from which it has arisen.
However this may be, it is the union of these qualities that render
jet capable of receiving a very brilliant polish, and assert its place
as a valuable object of jewelry.
Jet is found in all places where amber exists,
