it is employed successfully as a powerful antispasmodic.

Amber (Succinum).

(Arabic, ambar), "A fossil, indurated, vegetable juice, transparent or translucent, sometimes colorless, but usually of some shade of yellow or brown, and negatively electrified by friction." Eng. Cyclop.

Amber.

A mineral substance, hard, brittle, susceptible of a fine polish, and a color more or less yellow; more highly esteemed when whitish; its specific gravity varies from 1.080 to 1.085. Its taste is not agreeable, has no odor, but acquires some by rubbing it. Amber, exposed to the fire, becomes soft, melts and burns, giving out at the same time an agreeable odor.

Amber is generally associated with deposits of combustibles in earths of recent formation. It is met in arenaceous matters which accompany lignites, and often in contact with it. When associated with fossil woods, it is generally adhering to the vertical parts. This observation would prove that amber is nothing else than a transformation of a resinous substance produced by those vegetables which now belong to the mineral kingdom. Amber is found in France. Three or four millions of pounds are generally imported from the coasts of the Baltic Sea, where are found

the most celebrated deposits. From Dantzig to Memel the export of amber is the object of a considerable industry. It is found in beds of sand, stone, and fossil woods. Generally it is in little nodules; however, sometimes considerable masses are met with. Recently there was discovered, between Memel and Konigsberg, a specimen weighing twenty-five pounds. It is insoluble in water, soluble in alcohol, or in a solution of subcarbonate of potash; melted in siccative linseed oil, and incorporated with spirits of turpentine, it furnishes a very good varnish.

Ambergris (Ambra grisea).

"The origin of this substance was for a long time unknown. It is considered now to be a secretion formed in the intestines of some cachalots, principally the Physeter macrocephalus. It is found in irregular masses, and sometimes in large quantities, floating on the waters of the sea, or thrown on the shore of the coasts of Coromandel, Sumatra, in China, Japan, on the coasts of Africa and Brazil, Madagascar, Sicily, etc. It is formed in concentric layers. Its fracture is shelly, covered with gray spots, mixed with black, yellow, and white points. It is opalescent, of a variable consistency, sometimes soft and tenacious, sometimes. hard and brittle, returning, however, the impression of the nail. Its taste is greasy. Its odor

is strong but agreeable, and it is principally disengaged by heat and rubbing.

Ambergris has been sometimes found in very large pieces. The Dutch Company bought one piece from the King of Tidor which weighed one hundred and seventy-four pounds. He sold it for three thousand four hundred dollars. This same piece was sold in Europe for twenty-two thousand dollars. The French Company in India bought a ball weighing two hundred and thirty-seven and a half pounds for ten thousand four hundred dollars. This substance was so common years ago in the islands of the Polynesia that the inhabitants of Timor used it to calk their canoes.

Several chemists have found ambergris to consist of

Ambergris softens by heat, and when melted constitutes a thick oil, blackish, very volatile. It burns with rapidity, and gives a bright flame. It is insoluble in water, very soluble in alcohol, ethers, and some fixed oils.

Ambergris is rarely used alone. It is by mixing it with some other perfumes that its odor is developed. The essence of amber of perfumers is an alcoholic tincture of ambergris, to which oils of

roses, cloves, lavender, &c. are added. The perfume known by the name of essence of civet is obtained by the maceration, in a quart of rectified alcohol, of—

After three days of maceration it is filtered, and kept in well-corked bottles.

It is by pouring a few drops of this tincture into scented waters, tooth-powders, soaps, &c., that an ambrosial odor is given them.

The greatest consumption of ambergris is in compounding waters and perfumes for the toilet; nevertheless, medicine uses it sometimes in the atony of some of the organs.

Ambrette

Is also called musk seed, and belongs to a species of Ketmie, a plant belonging to the family of the Malvaces. It is the odoriferous ketmie (Hibiscusel-moschus), which is found in the East Indies, and in the warm countries of America, that furnishes the ambrette. The pod which contains it is pyramidal, about two inches long. The flowers are yellow, with a purple bottom; the calyx falls before the flower.

Ambrette is used in perfumery on account of its odor, which partakes at the same time of that

of musk and vanilla. It was the perfume gene

rally used for hair powder.

That seed is found to contain:

A proximate principle of vegetables, composed of oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon. Resins are solid, brittle, odorless, insipid, or acrid substances; a little heavier than water, yellowish, and more or less transparent. All can be electrified negatively by rubbing; they are bad conductors of electricity. At the ordinary temperature the air is without action on them. They are insoluble in water, soluble in alcohol, ether, fixed and volatile oils. There exist remarkable differences in the resins, according to their origin. They may be divided into three classes, viz: the liquid, solid, and gummy resins. They are also distinguished as natural and artificial. Many of them exude from the trunks and branches of trees.

Liquid resins are excretive products of vegetables of an inflammable nature, having a con