waggoner,” as Shakespeare calls him, lifeless into the River Eridanus—(the Padus or Po)—at the mouth of which river were found the Electrides Insulae (Amber Islands). The three sad sisters were transformed into poplars, and their tears of amber never ceased to flow. “To these tears,” says Pliny, “was given the name of Electrum, from the circumstance that the Sun was usually called Elector.” It requires but little thought to unveil this beautiful allegory which told the exact truth even while the nature of amber was disturbing the minds of scholars, its vegetable origin being doubted. The old story that amber was a concretion formed by the tears of the birds is a variation of the Phæthon legend which Thomas Moore has so gracefully rendered in “The Fire Worshippers.” “_Around thee shall glisten the loveliest amber That ever the sorrowing sea-bird hath wept._” That amber is found containing the material remains of extinct insects, etc., is alluded to by Pope in his lines quoted at the head of this chapter. That it was especially well known and esteemed in the ancient world can be accepted without the slightest doubt. Amber beads have been found in the tombs of Egypt as far back as the 6th dynasty (B. C. 3200), of the ancient Empire, a dynasty which ruled in old Chem long before the time of Joseph. HASHMAL as the Hebrew for amber has been doubted by some scholars who take it to signify the metal electrum, a substance combination of 4 parts of silver and one of gold, used by the Greeks, and from which some of their coins were struck; but other authorities accept it as indicating amber which was known long before electrum was compounded. Delitzsch believes the Hebrew HASHMAL to be derived from the old Assyrian word ESHMARU, and the connection is a very probable one. The Rabbis employ other words to express amber, as for example, KEPOS HAYA-RUDIN, amber of the Jordan. This occurs in a curious passage in which Rabbi Nathan states that if honey were mixed with the amber of the Jordan it became “profane.” Honey, according to Porphyry, is a symbol of death, and hence could not be mixed with amber which is a symbol of life. This would be as repulsive to the Rabbinical mind as the violation of the command: “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk” would be. Libations of honey could only, according to Porphyry, be offered to the terrestrial gods. Philo Judæus in Book III explains the matter as follows: “Moreover it also ordains that every sacrifice shall be offered up without any leaven or honey, not thinking it fit that either of these things should be brought to altar. The honey perhaps because the bee which collects it is not a clean animal, inasmuch as it derives its birth, as the story goes, from the putrefaction and corruption of dead oxen, or else this may be forbidden as a figurative declaration that all superfluous pleasure is unholy, making indeed the things which are eaten