. The magazine of American history with notes and queries. f a certainmysterious substance, hard and brittle, but of a resinous lustre and exceed-ingly beautiful. The tradition was to the effect that when Phaethon washurled by the lightning of Jove into the Eridanus, the tear-drops of hisbroken-hearted sisters were petrified as they fell into the sea, and thecomely young women themselves were transformed by the pitying godsinto poplar trees. These poetical tear-drops were significantly namedfrom the Greek word for amber—which was one of the titles of the sungod—and the new material was believe
. The magazine of American history with notes and queries. f a certainmysterious substance, hard and brittle, but of a resinous lustre and exceed-ingly beautiful. The tradition was to the effect that when Phaethon washurled by the lightning of Jove into the Eridanus, the tear-drops of hisbroken-hearted sisters were petrified as they fell into the sea, and thecomely young women themselves were transformed by the pitying godsinto poplar trees. These poetical tear-drops were significantly namedfrom the Greek word for amber—which was one of the titles of the sungod—and the new material was believed by many of the philosophersof antiquity to be possessed of a soul. Perhaps, if those wise men couldhave foreseen the part it was to play in the conduct of human affairsduring the last quarter of the nineteenth century, they might have been strengthened in suchThe earliest men-in the Odyssey oflist of jewels offeredchants to the Queennecklace hung withafterwards called itbecause of its fabu-ally remarked, Thein it, however dimin-of a living, healthy. AMBER WITH INCLOSED INSECTS. faith. tion of amber appearsHomer. It is in theby Phoenician mer-of Syra—the goldbits of amber. Plinythe gum-stone, andlous value sarcastic-price of a small figureutive, exceeds that slave. He evidentlyrefers to the insects imbedded in the solid but transparent substance,which hopelessly puzzled the sages of antiquity. What were bugs andspiders doing within womens petrified tears ? Since that remote pe-riod over eight hundred different species of insects have been found pre-served in amber, as well as some one hundred and sixty-three species ofthe leaves and other fragments of plants. Amber oftentimes incloses in-sects of species which no longer exist. It became one of the chief arti-cles of commerce among the Greeks and Romans, and the sole object ofmany a voyage of the enterprising Phoenicians. The source of supply wasthe Baltic coasts, where it is still found. During the reign of Nero an ex-pe
Size: 1801px × 1387px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, bookpublishernewyorkasbarnes
