AMBER, succinum, or electrum, in natural-history, a hard bituminous inflammable substance, brittle, somewhat transparent, generally of a yellowish colour, and when warm sends forth a fragrant bituminous odour. Amber is likewise endowed with an electrical virtue; when rubbed, it attracts straws or other light bodies. The taste of amber is acrid, bituminous, and somewhat astringent. It does not effervesce with acids, and is soluble in spirit of wine and essential oils. When subjected to a chemical analysis, it first yields a subacid water, afterwards a yellow fetid oil, and a volatile salt; what remains in the retort, is a black, light, friable matter, resembling the bitumen Judaicum.
Amber is chiefly found in Prussia, and in the Baltic sea, near the shore of Sudavia, where it is found swimming on the surface of the water, and is taken in nets. It is esteemed a powerful medicine in hysterical and hypochondriac cases.—Naturalists are much divided about the origin of amber: Some maintaining it to be an animal substance, others a resinous juice oozing from poplars and firs near the shore, and running into the sea. But it has lately been found to be a true bitumen; the veins of which were discovered, by the Prussians, in the bowels of the earth, in the marsh near Kultrin.