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Sucoinum, Amber

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SUCCINUM.                                305
to escape the absurdity of this hypothesis by sagaciously explaining that the tree producing it in Liguria was called the Lynx. Numerous other accounts follow : some placing the mines in Scythia (the favourite ancient cloak for ignorance) ; others in India ; some, lastly, in Egypt, under the name of Sacal, a notion where seems to lurk a confusion between Amber and certain odoriferous resins.
Pytheas, however (about 280 b.c.), finally brought back from his voyage the correct account that the Gutones, a German tribe dwelling upon the estuary Metonomus, picked it up in spring upon the coast of the island Abalus, or Basilea, a clay's sail out at sea, and either used it for fuel or sold it to the Teutons. This explains the prevalent Greek notion of Liguria being its native country, inasmuch as from the Northern Sea (the Baltic, the sole locality pro­ducing it in marketable quantities) it was carried overland by the Germans into Pannonia, and thence diffused amongst the Heneti, a nation seated at the head of the Adriatic. From these it was procured by the Cisalpine Gauls, a kindred race; whence originated the fable of its being carried down with the stream of the Po. In Pliny's age it was universally worn in necklaces by the Transpadane females (of Lombardy and Piedmont) partly as an orna­ment, partly as a prophylactic against goitres, to which they were subject in consequence of the bad quality of the water. Thus the early Greeks obtained it from the Teu­tonic tribes upon the Adriatic ; the Etruscans from the Cisalpine Gauls upon their northern frontier.
It is strange the material should have maintained its high value amongst the Romans, in spite of the enormous importation that had gone on ever since the German cam­paign of Germanicus had opened up a communication with the Baltic. That commander had actually visited with his fleet the island Austeravia, that furnished the chief
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