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Ch. 6: Amber

Ch. 6: Opal Page of 515 Ch. 6: Amber Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
AMBER.
348
from a large block and the whole work of one entire piece, the vase, the handles, which consisted of serpents, along with the tazza and the extremely fine polish, displayed the great ingenuity of the master.
A hollow altar of Oriental alabaster, provided with a lamp and intended to show the remarkable transparency of the material, and of excellent workmanship, along with a great many statues and groups of life-size figures, were exhibited both in the London and New York Exhibi­tions.
AMBER.
This gem was known to the inhabitants of remote ages; the Phoenicians sailed to the Baltic (the Glessany islands), for the sole purpose of obtaining amber, which they wrought into chains and other ornaments, that were sold to the Greeks, who called the same electron. In the Trojan war, as Homer reports, the women wore necklaces of amber. Its electric properties were likewise known, for Thales was so much surprised at that phenomenon, that be attributed it to a soul in the amber; and Pliny says that amber is revived by heat, the nature of electricity not being understood. It was also worn as an amulet, and used for medicine. The ancients could not agree as to its origin: Philemon, according to Pliny, classed it as a fossil; Tacitus, however, judgipg from the insects held in it, con­cluded it must be a vegetable juice, whence its name in Latin, succinum, or juice. Many naturalists have, until lately, considered amber as a mineral; but it has been satifactorily proved by Schweigger and Brewster, from its chemical characters, and polarizing light, to be a gum-resin, and that it is the juice of a tree, called the amber-tree, now extinct.
Amber occurs in nodules or roundish masses, from the
Ch. 6: Opal Page of 515 Ch. 6: Amber
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