Ch. 11: Amber, Malachite, Serpentine, Bowenite, Williamsite, ... Catlinite, etc.

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	202 GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES IN THE 1.065 to 1.081. The specimen examined was found at a depth of 28 feet, in a six-foot stratum of the middle marl-bed, in and under 20 feet of cretaceous marl. In 1886, a piece of amber was found on the southwest branch of Mantua Creek, near Sewell, Gloucester County, N. J., in the lower marl bed. Prof. Washington C. Kerr mentions the finding of succinite (amber) in lumps of several ounces weight, in Pitt County and elsewhere in the Tertiary marl beds of the eastern counties of North Carolina. It is also found along the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal in Kent County, Del. Dr. Edward Hitchcock' refers to one or two masses of amber weighing a pound that had been found in Martha's Vineyard, Gay Head, and Nantucket, and states his belief that they were from the Tertiary formation. In February, 1883, the writer exhibited and described before the New York Academy of Sciences an elongated and twisted mass of opaque, rich yellow-colored amber, weighing 12 ounces, that had been found on the shore at Nantucket, Mass. This specimen, which was evidently from the Tertiary deposit, is now in the Amherst College Cabinet. Other specimens have been found in this locality. The discovery of specimens of amber in one of the Union Pacific coal mines of the Laramie Beds, in Wyoming, was reported by F. F. Chisholm in 1885; but at that time the tests were not completed, so that its genuineness could not be asserted. The material that was brought to Denver was hard, highly electric, and of a good clear yellow color; the fusing point was a little low, and the odor of an ignited fragment slightly resembled that of burning india rubber. In places, the substance was found two inches thick.' Amber, according to Charles G. Yale, is common in the lignite deposits on the peninsula of Alaska. It is also obtained in the alluvium of the delta of the Yukon River, and in the vicinity of most of the Tertiary coal deposits on the Fox Islands, being everywhere an article of ornament among the natives, who carve it into rude beads. The discovery of amber in large quantities in America would be of the greatest interest, for here, as in Europe, it would contain fossil remains that would

	¹ Am. J. Sci. I., Vol. 22, p. 50, July, 1832. * Mineral Resources of the United States for 1885, p. 442.

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