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76
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DE NATURA FOSSILIUM
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cold
body of her nude husband with cloths that have been warmed by the fire
so that he will not suffer too much from the cold and can go back into
the sea refreshed. He goes back again and again until he can find no
more material. He must take everything that he finds to an overseer who
gives him an equal measure of salt for the amber. This is the only
compensation he receives for so much work and such irksome labor yet he
is bound to this by old and long established custom. The Sudini are not
allowed the liberty of travelling nor are they allowed to conceal
amber. When anyone is caught concealing it his civil liberties are
taken from him, he is soon brought to trial and hanged from a tree.
However, these Germans get as much pleasure from gathering amber as
they do from fishing. In any one year with more than a thousand
merchants along the Rhine less than ten will sell amber which, having
been shaped into various forms, is sold in lots. White amber is the
most esteemed today because it has the most pleasing odor, is most
efficacious as a remedy and is rarest. The next most prized amber is
the transparent reddish yellow and deep red and next the whitish
variety which is the pale color of cooked honey. The other amber is of
little value. A large piece sells for more than many small pieces of
the same weight.
In
other localities where amber is found on sea shores it is rarely
collected in nets. It is either picked up on the dry sand where it has
been left by the waves when they have subsided or when the sea is calm.
The larger pieces are located with a three pronged fork and dug up from
the beach or the sea bottom. It is sometimes found when sand is taken
from the shore. Recently amber has been found on the beach near
Dantiscus where it has the appearance of having been thrown away and
later covered with sand. Obviously Philemon was not entirely wrong when
he wrote that this mineral is dug up at two places in Scythia. The
regions beyond the Vistula river were called Scythia by some Greek
writers among them Xenocrates and Sarmatia by others. Philemon writes
that white and wax colored amber is dug up at one place and dark
reddish brown in another, but this does not agree with the facts.
Actually all colors of amber are found in one and the same place,
whitish, wax colored, reddish brown, deep red and that which is the
color of cooked honey. Gray amber usually has a crass or cloudy
appearance due to the sea salt it has picked up. Reddish brown and deep
red are commonly transparent and sometimes contain small flying insects
such as flies, gnats, bees and rustic animals such as ants, small red
worms, spiders, lizards and vipers according to Martialis. Other
inclusions are swimming things such as fish, the parts of small
animals such as the wings of flies and fish roe, inanimate substances
such as the stalks of plants and leaves with branches, all of which are
either picked up by, crawl into or fall into the liquid bitumen when it
flows out of the earth or swim into it when it flows down into the sea
and once having been included in this manner they are changed into
stone along with the amber.
Amber varies in taste. The white is oily sweet while the other colors are
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