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Sucoinum, Amber

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SUCCINUM
331
that, if the Greek mineralogists did not understand Amber by that name (otherwise, Langurium), there was no such thing in existence, and the whole account of its origin was a mere fable.
Pliny, after craving the indulgence of his readers, takes occa­sion to expose " the love of lying distinguishing the Greeks, since there was some advantage in knowing all their marvellous tales ;" and proceeds to enumerate the various fictions by which they had accounted for its origin. The most ancient of these, resting chiefly on the authority of the poets, made it to be the tears of the Electrides, changed into poplars on the banks of the Eridanus, dropped upon the death of their brother Phaëthon. Others made it distil from trees in certain islands far up in the Hadriatic. The explanation of its being the condensed urine of the lynx had also many supporters, and the habitat of these beasts was placed in the north of Italy.1 Sudines and Metro-dorus endeavoured to escape the absurdity of this hypothesis by 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 in Egypt, under the name of Sacal, where there seems to be a confusion between it and certain odoriferous resins.
Pytheas, however (about 280 b.c.), gave 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 day's sail out at sea, and 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 Trans-padane females (of Lombardy and Piedmont), partly as an orna-
1 The North of Italy -was the same Terra Fabulosa to the earlier Greeks, that India became to the later.
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