Interesting in itself, amber acquires a still greater scientific importance through the remains of extinct plants and animals which are found imbedded in its substance, as in a transparent shrine. As, in the present day, many a luckless fly is caught in the recently secreted resins of the coniferæ and hymeneæ, thus also amber, while still in a semi-fluid state, became the tomb of numerous insects and spiders. So wonderful is their preservation that they seem to have lived but yesterday, and yet how many millenniums may since have passed away; for although the amber formation belongs to the miocene period, and is consequently of modern date when compared with the forests of the coal-formation, we still are separated from it by a vast series of ages.
INSECTS OR VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES ENCLOSED IN AMBER.
The extinct organic world which is thus beautifully revealed to us so greatly resembled the present vegetable and animal creation that, on a superficial examination of the fossil remains contained in a rich amber collection, one would hardly suppose them to be anything very uncommon. The unlearned observer who connects the idea of a past world with grotesque or gigantic forms, shakes his head with an incredulous smile, and thinks that he has often seen similar flowers blooming in the fields, or met with similar insects in the forest. Even the naturalist is uncertain, until a closer inspection teaches him that each of these so wonderfully preserved plants or animals possesses some distinct characteristics which widely distinguish it from the analogous forms of the present day.
Of the plants of the coal period we find not a single one existing in the Amber Forest; the vegetation is much more complicated and various in its aspect; and the numerous coniferæ indicate a climate similar to that of the present northern regions. But arboreal growth was by no means confined to the coniferæ, for evergreen oaks and poplars flourished along with them.
Heath plants, chiefly belonging to genera similar to Andromeda, Kalmia, Rhododendrum, Ledum, and Vaccinium, as testified by numerous leaves, formed the underwood of these forests, a vegetation similar in character to that of the Alleghany Mountains.
The deep shade of these primitive woods prevented the evaporation of water, the ground remained damp and swampy, and the mouldering leaves produced a thick layer of humus, on which flourished, no doubt, a dense cryptogamous vegetation, as well-preserved ferns, mosses, lichens, confervæ, and small mushrooms, partly growing as parasites on dead insects, sufficiently testify.
But the vegetable remains of that ancient period are far surpassed in variety and number by the embalmed relics of the animal creation. Among 2,000 specimens of insects collected by Dr. Berendt, to whom we owe the best monograph on amber, this naturalist found more than 800 different species.
Flies, phryganeæ, and other neuroptera, crustacea, millepedes and spiders, blattidæ in every phase of development, beetles, bees, and a large variety of ants, show a great similarity to the insect life of the present day, and justify the conclusion that the contemporaneous animal forms, whose size or peculiar habitat prevented their being embalmed in amber, were comparatively no less abundant.
Whether man already existed at the time of the amber-formation is a question which, of course, could only be thoroughly settled by the discovery of some specimen of human workmanship imbedded in the fossilised resin. At all events, the amber-rings of rude workmanship which have been found at a considerable depth below the surface of the earth, along with rough pieces, sufficiently prove that man must have been a very old inhabitant of the Baltic regions, for those remarkable specimens of his unskilled industry have evidently preceded the catastrophe which buried the rough amber under the earth, and must have been exposed for the same lapse of time to the influences of the soil, as they are all found covered with the same dull and damaged crust.