in Surgery, the name of an instrument for reducing dislocated bones. In Anatomy, a term for the superficial jutting out of a bone.

(Succinum), in Natural History, a solid, hard, semipellucid, bituminous substance, of a particular nature, of use in medicine and in several of the arts. It has been called ambra by the Arabians, and elektron by the Greeks.

Amber has been of great repute in the world from the earliest times. Many years before Christ it was in esteem as a medicine; and Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Æschylus, and others, have commended its virtues. In the times of the Romans, it became in high esteem as a gem; and in the luxurious reign of Nero, immense quantities of it were brought to Rome, and used for ornamenting works of various kinds.

The most remarkable property of this substance is, that when rubbed it draws or attracts other bodies to it; and this, it is observed, it does even to those substances which the ancients thought it had an antipathy to; as oily bodies, drops of water, human sweat, &c. Add, that, by the friction, it is brought to yield light pretty copiously in the dark; whence it is reckoned among the native phosphors.

The property which amber possesses of attracting light bodies was very anciently observed. Thales of Miletus, 600 years before Christ, concluded from hence, that it was animated. But the first person who expressly mentions this substance is Theophrastus, about the year 300 before Christ. The attractive property of amber is likewise occasionally taken notice of by Pliny and other naturalists, particularly by Gellius, Kenelm Digby, and Sir Thomas Brown; but it was generally apprehended that this quality was peculiar to amber and jet, and perhaps agate, till Gilbert published his treatise de Magnete, in the year 1600. From ἀμβρός, the Greek name for amber, is derived the term Electricity, which is now very extensively applied, not only to the power of attracting light bodies inherent in amber, but to other similar powers, and their various effects in whatever bodies they reside, or to whatever bodies they may be communicated.

Amber assumes all figures in the ground; that of a pear, an almond, a pea, &c. In amber there have been found to be letters found very well formed; and even Hebrew and Arabic characters.—Within some pieces, leaves, insects, &c., have likewise been found included; which seems to indicate either that the amber was originally in a fluid state, or that having been exposed to the sun it was once softened, and rendered susceptible of the leaves, insects, &c., which came in its way. The latter of these suppositions seems the more agreeable to the phenomenon; because those insects, &c., are never found in the centre of the pieces of amber, but always near the surface. It is observed by the inhabitants of those places where amber is produced, that all animals, whether terrestrial, aerial, or aquatic, are extremely fond of it, and that pieces of it are frequently found in their excrements. The bodies of insects, found buried in amber, are viewed with admiration by all the world; but of the most remarkable of these, many are to be suspected as counterfeit, the great price at which beautiful specimens of this kind sell, having tempted ingenious cheats to introduce animal bodies in such artful manners, into seemingly whole pieces of amber, that it is not easy to detect the fraud.

Of those insects which have been originally enclosed in amber, some are plainly seen to have struggled hard for their liberty, and even to have left their limbs behind them in the attempt; it being no unusual thing to see, in a mass of amber that contains a stout beetle, the animal wanting one, or perhaps two of its legs; and those legs in different places, nearer that part of the mass from which it has travelled. This also may account for the common accident of finding legs or wings of flies, without the rest of their bodies, in pieces of amber; the insects having, when entangled in the yet soft and viscid matter, escaped, at the expense of leaving those limbs behind them. Drops of clear water are sometimes also preserved in amber. These have doubtless been received into it while soft, and preserved by its hardening round them. Beautiful leaves of a pinnated structure, resembling some of the ferns, or maidenhairs, have been found in some pieces; but these are rare, and the specimens of great value. Mineral substances are also found at times lodged in masses of amber. Some of the pompous collections of the German princes boast of specimens of native gold and silver in masses of amber; but as there are many substances of the marcasite, and other kinds, that have all the glittering appearance of gold and silver, it is not to be too hastily concluded, that these metals are really lodged in these beds of amber. Iron is found in various shapes immersed in amber; and as it is often seen eroded, and sometimes in the state of vitriol, it is not impossible but that copper, and the other metals, may be also sometimes immersed in it in the same state; hence the bluish and greenish colours, frequently found in the recent pieces of amber, may be owing, like the particles of the gem colours, to these metals; but as the gems, by their dense texture, always retain their colours, this lighter and more lax bitumen usually loses what it gets of this kind by keeping some time. Small pebbles, grains of sand, and fragments of other stones, are also not unfrequently found immersed in amber.

Naturalists have been greatly divided as to the origin of this substance, and what class of bodies it belongs to; some referring it to the vegetable, others to the mineral, and some even to the animal kingdom. Pliny describes it as "a resinous juice, oozing from aged pines and firs (others say from poplars, whereof there are whole forests on the coasts of Sweden), and discharged thence into the sea, where undergoing some alteration, it is thrown, in this form, upon the shores of Prussia, which lie very low: he adds, that it was hence the ancients gave it the denomination ficcinum; from ficcus, juice.

Some suppose amber a compound substance. Prussia, say they, and the other countries which produce amber, are moistened with a bituminous juice, which mixing with the vitriolic salts abounding in those places, the points of those salts fix its fluidity, whence it congeals; and the result of that congelation makes what we call amber; which is more or less pure, transparent and firm, as those parts of salt and bitumen are more or less pure, and are mixed in this or that proportion.

Mr Brydone, in his Tour to Sicily and Malta, says, that the river Gearetta, formerly celebrated by the poets under the name of Simetus, throws up near its mouth great quantities of amber. He mentions also a kind of artificial amber, not uncommon there, made, as he was told, from copal, but very different from the natural.

According to Hartman, amber is formed of a bitumen, mixed with vitriol and other salts. But though this were allowed him in regard to the fossil amber, many dispute whether the sea amber be so produced. It is, however, apparent, that all amber is of the same origin, and probably that which is found in the sea has been washed thither out of the cliffs; though Hartman thinks it very possible, that some of it may be formed in the earth under the sea, and be washed up thence. The sea amber is usually finer to the eye than the fossil; but the reason is, that it is divested of the coarse coat with which the other is covered while in the earth.

Upon the whole, it seems generally agreed upon, that amber is a true bitumen of a fossil origin. In a late volume of the Journal de Physique, however, we find it asserted by Dr Girtanner to be an animal product, a sort of honey or wax formed by a species of large ant, called by Linnaeus, formica rufa. These ants, our author informs us, inhabit the old pine forests, where they sometimes form hills about six feet in diameter; and it is generally in these ancient forests, or in places where they have been, that fossil amber is found. This substance is not hard as that which is taken up in the sea at Prussia, and which is well known to naturalists. It has the consistence of honey or of half melted wax, but it is of a yellow colour like common amber; it gives the same product by chemical analysis, and it hardens like the other when it is suffered to remain some time in a solution of common salt. This accounts for the insects that are so often found inclosed in it. Among these insects ants are always the most prevailing; which tends farther, Mr Girtanner thinks, to the confirmation of his hypothesis. Amber, then, in his opinion, is nothing but a vegetable oil rendered concrete by the acid of ants, just as wax is nothing but an oil hardened by the acid of bees; a fact incontrovertibly proved, we are told, since Mr Metherie has been able to make artificial wax by mixing oil of olives with the nitrous acid, and which wax is not to be distinguished from the natural.

There are several indications which discover where amber is to be found. The surface of the earth is there covered with a soft scaly stone; and vitriol in particular always abounds there, which is sometimes found white, sometimes reduced into a matter like melted glaas, and sometimes figured like petrified wood.

Amber of the finest kind has been found in England. It is frequently thrown on the shores of Yorkshire, and many other places, and found even in our clay pits; the pits dug for tile clay, between Tyburn and Kennington gravel pits, and that behind St George's Hospital at Hyde-park corner, have afforded fine specimens.

Poland, Silesia, and Bohemia, are famous for the amber dug up there at this time. Germany affords great quantities of amber, as well dug up from the bowels of the earth, as toiled about on the shore of the sea and rivers there. Saxony, Mecklenburg, Sweden, and many other places in this tract of Europe, abound with it. Denmark has afforded, at different times, several quantities of fossil amber; and the shores of the Baltic abound with it. But the countries lying on the Baltic afford it in the greatest abundance of all; and of these the most plentiful country is Prussia, and the next is Pomerania. Prussia was, as early as the time of Theodoric the Goth, famous for amber; for this substance coming into great repute with this prince, some natives of Prussia, who were about his court, offered their service to go to their own country, where that substance, they said, was produced, and bring back great stores of it. They accordingly did so; and from this time Prussia had the honour to be called the country of amber, instead of Italy, which had before undeservedly that title. This article alone brings his Prussian majesty a revenue of 26,000 dollars annually. The amber of Prussia is not only found on the sea coasts, but in digging; and though that of Pomerania is generally brought from the shores, yet people who dig, on different occasions, in the very heart of the country, at times find amber.

Junker describes, after Neumann, the Prussian amber mines, which are the richest known. First, At the surface of the earth is found a stratum of sand. Immediately under this sand is a bed of clay, filled with small flints of about an inch diameter each. Under this clay lies a stratum of black earth or turf, filled with fossil wood, half decomposed and bituminous: this stratum is extended upon a bank of minerals, containing little metal except iron, which are consequently pyrites. Lastly, Under this bed the amber is found scattered about in pieces, or sometimes accumulated in heaps.

Amber has a subacrid resinous taste, and fragrant aromatic smell, especially when dissolved. It differs from the other bituminous substances in this, that it yields by distillation a volatile acid salt, which none of the others do; otherwise it affords the same sort of principles as them, viz. an acid phlegm, an oil which gradually becomes thicker as the distillation is continued; and when the operation is finished, there remains a black caput mortuum in the retort. When boiled in water, it neither foams nor undergoes any sensible alteration. Exposed to the fire in an open vessel, it melts into a black mass very like a bitumen: it is partly soluble in spirit of wine, and likewise in some essential oils; but it is with difficulty that the expressed ones are brought to act upon it. The stronger sorts of fixed alkaline lixivia almost totally dissolve it.

This substance is principally of two colours, white and yellow. The white is the most esteemed for medicinal purposes, as being the most odoriferous, and containing the greatest quantity of volatile salt; though the yellow is most valued by those who manufacture beads and other toys with it, by reason of its transparency.

Amber is the basis of all varnishes, by solution in the ways described under the article VARNISH.

Amber, when it has once been melted, irrecoverably loses its beauty and hardness. There have been some, however, who pretended they had an art of melting some small pieces of amber into a mass, and constituting large ones of them: but this seems such another undertaking as the making of gold; all the trials that have yet been made by the most curious experimenters, proving, that the heat which is necessary to melt amber is sufficient to destroy it. (Phil. Transl. No. 248. p. 25.)

Could amber indeed be dissolved without impairing its transparency, or one large mass be made of it by uniting several small ones, it is easy to see what would be the advantages of such a process. The art of embalming might possibly be also carried to a great height by this, if we could preserve the human corpse in a transparent case of amber, as the bodies of flies, spiders, grasshoppers, &c. are to a great perfection.

Something of a substitute of this kind we have in pine rosin; which being dissolved by heat, and the bodies of small animals several times dipped in it, they are thus coated with colophony, that in some degree resembles amber; but this must be kept near dust.

Amber in substance has been much recommended as a nervous and cordial medicine; and alleged to be very efficacious in promoting the menstrual discharge, and the exclusion of the fetus and secundines in labour: but as in its crude state it is quite insoluble by our juices, it certainly can have very little effect on the animal system, and therefore it is now seldom given in substance. The forms in which amber is prepared are, a tincture, a salve, and an oil; the preparations and uses of which are described in the proper place under the article PHARMACY.