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AMBER.
Amber, prized less as an ornament than as safeguard from
diseases of the throat, was for long a mystery to the ancients.
It is in reality the resin of pre-historic trees, and is found always
on the seashore, washed up by the waves. The Baltic coast is the
headquarters of amber, though some is found about Japan.
The pale, clear, transparent yellow is the most common, the
"clouded," as it is called, opaque yellow, costing more. But the
most effective of all is reddish-brown, in the form of large faceted
beads, from Sicily.
Its hardness is 2 to 2.5, specific gravity 1.8, and it is very elec-
tric.
Poppaea's hair was described by Nero, in the first year of Our
Lord, as like amber. Pliny considers this monstrous! Such hair
was very much admired in Latin Rome, because extremely rare. It
might well have been called, if like the amber of Sicily, "hyacinthine."
JET.
Jet is generally admitted by authorities to be a variety of fossil
trees, or coal, often called black amber, particularly on the Baltic
coast.
Some insist on regarding it as a black mineral, known to the
ancients as gagates, from the river Gagas in Syria, at the mouth of
which it was found.
Still others say that most of the jet now used is onyx, a chalcedony
chemically treated to produce a fine black stone, usually with
a dull polish instead of the bright.
Its hardness is 1.5; specific gravity, 1.3, at once the lightest and
softest of "gems/ 1
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