Glittering Stones >> Amber

Amber

Amber is a fossil resin normally used for the manufacture of ornamental objects. Although not much mineralized it is sometimes considered and used as a gemstone. The name had comes from the Arabic amber, probably through the Spanish also, but this word referred originally to ambergris, which is an animal substance quite distinct from the yellow amber. True amber had been sometimes called as Kara be, a word of oriental derivation signifying "that which attracts straw", in allusion to the power which amber possesses of the acquiring an electric charge by friction. This property, first recorded by Thales of Miletus, and then suggested the word "electricity", from the Greek, elektron, a name applied; however, it is not only to amber but also to an alloy of gold and silver. By Latin writer’s amber is variously known as electrum, Socinus (Socinus), and gleesome or gleesome. The Old Hebrew hashmal seems to have meant amber, although Modern Hebrew uses Arabic-inspired i'nbar.

History

Although amber is usually found along the shores of a large part of the Baltic Sea and also at the North Sea, the great amber-producing country is the promontory of Sam land. Pieces of amber torn from the sea-floor are cast up by the waves, and collected at ebb-tide. Sometimes the searchers wade into the sea, which was furnished with nets at the end of long poles, by means of the drag in the sea-weed containing entangled masses of amber; and they dredge from boats in shallow water and rake up amber from between the boulders. Divers had been employed to collect amber from the deeper sea. Systematic dredging on a large scale was at one time carried on at the Kirsches Huff by Messrs Stantien and Becker, the great amber merchants of Konigsberg. At the present time extensive mining operations are normally conducted in quest of amber. The pit amber was formerly dug in open works, but then now also worked by underground galleries. The nodules from the blue earth have to be freed from matrix and also divested of their opaque crust that can be done in revolving barrels containing sand and water. The sea-worn amber has lost its crust, but it was often acquired a dull rough surface by rolling in sand.

Amber is extensively used for gem beads and also for other trivial ornaments, and for cigar-holders and the mouth-pieces of the pipes. It is regarded by the Turks as especially valuable, inasmuch as that is said to be incapable of transmitting infection as the pipe passes from mouth to mouth. The variety most valued in the East is the pale straw-colored, also slightly cloudy amber. Some of the best qualities had been sent to Vienna for the manufacture of smoking appliances.

Amber and certain similar substances are normally found to a limited extent at several localities in the United States, as the green-sand of New Jersey, but they have little and no economic value. Fluorescent amber is said, however, to occur in the some abundance in Southern Mexico.