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Ch. 6: Amber

Ch. 6: Amber Page of 515 Ch. 6: Amber Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
348
A POPULAR TREATISE ON GEMS.
must be taken not to overheat it by friction, as it will then be liable to crack. Amber has occasionally been cut into cameos, busts, images, &c.
Impure amber pieces may be much improved by wrap­ping them in paper and allowing them to digest for forty hours in hot ashes, in a pot filled with sand ; or by boiling them with gradually increased heat in linseed oil. Amber may also be colored red, blue, and violet, and dissolved in absolute alcohol; it may be cast into different ornaments. Broken amber may be mended by a cement of linseed oil, gum mastic, and litharge; or by moistening the ends of both pieces with potash, warming the same, and pressing the parts together.
The price of amber was, in former times, much higher than at present, but size, color, and transparency always govern the same. A pure exquisite specimen of one pound is sold for forty dollars; but most good specimens are sent to Armenia, the East, and Turkey, to which places manufac­tured amber goods to the amount of fifty to sixty thousand dollars are annually exported from one manufactory at Stolpe, in East Prussia.
Amber is often adulterated in various ways, and more especially with giim copal, which is palmed upon the igno­rant for amber, and which does actually resemble it in many respects: for both are of the same color; both be­come negatively electric by friction; both have nearly the same specific gravity; and both give a pleasant odor in burning; hence when wrought as jewelry or ornaments, it is not easy to distinguish the one from the other. One mode of detection was pointed out by the Abbe Hatty: "If," says he, "a fragment of amber be attached to the point of a knife and inflamed, it will burn with some noise and a kind of ebullition, but without liquifying so as to flow, and if it should fall on any flat surface it rebounds a
Ch. 6: Amber Page of 515 Ch. 6: Amber
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