That birds enlivened the amber-forest might well have been supposed, as there was no want of fruits and mealy seeds for their subsistence; but their existence is proved beyond all doubt by a feather which Dr. Berendt discovered in a piece of pale yellow transparent amber. To what bird may this remarkable relic of the past have belonged, and when may the wing to which it was attached while living have cleaved the air?
No fish or reptile has ever yet been found in amber, however frequently fraud may have attempted to imbed them in a resinous case for the deception of ignorance. It is, indeed, hardly conceivable that the finny and agile inhabitants of the waters could ever have allowed themselves to be caught in the resins of a terrestrial forest, though some small and less active reptiles may occasionally have been entrapped.
Of all the insects and spiders, and the more rare crustaceans inclosed in amber, not a single specimen belongs to a species of the present time; but though the species have disappeared, almost all the animals of those primitive woods, as far as they are known, belong to genera of the present time, so that upon the whole the proportion of the still flourishing genera to such as are extinct is as eight to one.
It is remarkable that, along with many specimens similar to the present indigenous types, some are found with a tropical character, whose representatives are at present existing in the Brazilian forests, while others are completely without any analogous forms in the present creation; as, for instance, those strange Arachnidans, the Archæi, which, armed with toothed mandibles longer than the head, and provided with strong raptorial claws, must have been most formidable enemies to the contemporaneous insects.
Amber was held in high estimation by the nations of antiquity, and reckoned among the gems on account of its rarity and value. Ornaments made of this substance have been found among the vestiges of the lacustrine dwellings of Switzerland, and afford a convincing proof that even in prehistoric times it was an article of commerce. Many centuries before the Christian era the Phœnician navigators purchased amber from the German tribes on the coast of the North Sea, these, in their turn, having obtained it, probably by barter, from the Baltic lands. Thus from hand to hand the beautiful fossil resin found its way to the courts of the Indian princes on the Ganges, and of the Persian kings in Susa and Persepolis. According to Barth[[69]] the search for the Amber Land was most probably the aim of the journey which the celebrated traveller Pytheas of Massilia undertook 330 years before Christ, in the times of Alexander the Great.
Plato and Aristotle, Herodotus and Æschylus, have described and lauded in prose and verse the wonderful properties of amber, which was not only highly valued for its beauty, its aromatic smell, and its electro-magnetic power, but also for the medicinal virtues ascribed to it by a credulous age.
Under Nero the wealthy Roman senators and knights lavished immense sums on decorating the seats and tables, the doors and columns, of their state-rooms with amber, ivory, and tortoiseshell; and even at a later period, under Theodosius the Great, when the declining empire was already verging to its fall, large quantities still continued to be imported from Germany.
Though no longer so highly prized as by the ancients, amber still continues to be a source of considerable profit to the Baltic provinces. Almost all the amber collected throughout the land finds its way to the seaports of Königsberg and Dantzig, where it is sorted according to its size and quality. Good round pieces of a shape fit to be worked into ornaments, and weighing about half an ounce, are worth from nine to ten dollars per pound; a good piece of a pound weight fetches as much as fifty dollars; and first-rate specimens of a still more considerable size, and faultless in form and colour, are worth at least one hundred dollars, or even more, per pound. A mass weighing thirteen pounds has been found, the value of which at Constantinople was said to be no less than 30,000 dollars. Smaller pieces from the size of a bean to that of a pea, such as are fit for the beads of necklaces or rosaries, are valued at from two to four shillings per pound, and the grit or amber rubbish which is used for varnishing, fumigating, or the manufacture of oil and acid of amber, is worth no more than from three to eighteen pence. It is much to be regretted that amber, when melted or dissolved, is incapable of coalescing into larger masses with the retention of all its former qualities, as then its value would be considerably greater. Large amber vases would then ornament the apartments of the wealthy, and the corpses of the illustrious dead might repose in transparent shrines, and their features be preserved from decay for many ages.
The trade in rough amber is almost exclusively in the hands of the Jews, who purchase it from the amber-fishers, or are interested in the diggings which are made on most of the littoral estates. Through the agency of the smaller collectors, it is then concentrated in the hands of the rich traders, who sell or export it in larger assortments.
The best qualities only of translucent, milky, or semi-opaque amber find a ready sale in the Oriental market, where they are almost exclusively used for making the mouth-pieces to pipes, and these form an essential constituent of the Turkish tschibouque; for there is a current belief among the Eastern nations that amber is incapable of transmitting infection.