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At their base may be found inexhaustible quantities of fossil gum, with which the carriages and furniture of civilized countries are varnished; their boles exude myrrh and frankincense; their foliage is draped with orchilla-weed, useful for dye.

Amber is a fossil gum or resin, the juice of pine trees, which in course of time has become petrified like coal.

Some said that she was of the colour of a ripe banana, others that she was like fossil gum, others like a reddish oil-nut, and others again that her face was more like the colour of the moon than anything else.

Like the fossil gum, pieces of it were found now and then on the seashore, where they had been cast up by the waves; hence, doubtless, the giving of the same name to both.

Anciently, the substance was known as amber—a name which was subsequently applied also to the fossil gum now commonly so called.