What are these rocks? Are they amber?

**SteveDodds** · Aug 06, 2011, 01:34 AM

I'm thinking they look a lot like pictures of raw amber that I have seen on google images. I really don't know what they are for sure. I tried doing some tests that I read about online. Most tests passed. One failed. When I put the rock over a lighter it definitely gives off a strange burnt herby smell. I did it a half hour ago and I can still smell it. When I rub it really fast on a cloth it gives off the same smell. When I do the salt water test that I read about online the rocks fail miserably. I found the bigger one of these in some landscaping stone at a house and the smaller one along side a road. Both of these I found in Iowa. There is no bugs inside of them but the big one has a small pebble inside of it. The smaller one has a flat spot on it like I would think amber would look like when it dribbled out of a tree and onto the ground. The flat spot even has some texture on it that looks like the way gum would look if you pushed it down on the ground outside. What does everyone think? Hopefully the pics work out. They were taken with phone. Btw, there's been a lot of glacial activity here in the past.