Amber--the only kind of resin that rises to the dignity of a gem--is unfitted for the bowl of a tobacco-pipe, because it cannot well bear the heat; but it is largely used for mouth-pieces, especially by wealthy Oriental smokers. The Turks have a belief that amber wards off infection; an opinion which, whether right or wrong, tells well for the amber workers. There has always been a mystery connected with this remarkable substance. So far back as the Phenicians, amber was picked up on the Baltic shore of what is now called Prussia; and the same region has ever since been the chief store-house for it. Tacitus was not far wrong when he conjectured that amber is a gum or resin exuded from certain trees, although other authorities have preferred a theory that it is a kind of wax or fat which has undergone slow petrifaction. At any rate, it must at one time have been liquid or semi-liquid; for insects, flies, detached wings and legs, and small fragments of various kinds, are often found imbedded in it--those odds and ends of which Pope said:-- "The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare; The wonder's how the devil they got there!" Whether new stores of amber are now being formed, or whether, like coal, it was the result of causes not now in operation, is an unsolved problem. The specimens obtained differ considerably; some are pale as primrose, some deep orange or almost brown; some nearly as transparent as crystal, some nearly opaque. Large pieces, uniform in color and translucency, fetch high prices; and there are fashions in this matter for which it is not easy to account,--seeing that the Turks and other Orientals buy up, at prices which Europeans are unwilling to give, all the specimens presenting a straw-yellow color and a sort of cloudy translucency. The Russians, on the contrary, prefer orange-yellow transparent specimens. The amber is seldom obtained by actual mining. [Illustration: Searching for amber.]