determined goals; and this is so, not only if the poles have been disposed in the vessel evenly with the plane of the horizon, but also in the case of one pole, whether austral or boreal, being raised in the vessel ten, or twenty, or thirty, or fifty or eighty degrees,* above the plane of the horizon, or lowered beneath it: Still you shall see the boreal part of the stone seek the south, and the austral part seek the north; So much so that if the pole of the stone shall be only one degree distant from the Zenith and highest point of the heaven, in the case of a spherical stone, the whole stone revolves until the pole occupies its own site; though not in the absolutely direct line, it will yet tend toward those parts, and come to rest in the meridian of the directive action. With a like impulse too it is borne if the austral pole have been raised toward the upper quarters, the same as if the Boreal had been exalted above the Horizon. But it is always to be noted that, though there are various kinds of unlikeness in the stones, and one loadstone may far surpass another in virtue and efficiency; yet all hold to the same limits, and are borne toward the same points.* Further it is to be remembered that all who before our time wrote of the poles of the stone, and all the craftsmen and navigators, have been very greatly in error in considering the part of the stone which tended to the north as the north pole of the stone, and that which verged toward the south, the south pole, which we shall hereafter prove to be false. So badly hitherto hath the whole magnetick philosophy been cultivated, even as to its foundation principles.
CHAP. V.
Loadstone seems to attract Loadstone when in natural
position: but repels it when in a contrary one, and brings
it back to order.
irst of all we must declare, in familiar language, what are the apparent and common virtues of the stone; afterward numerous subtilities, hitherto abstruse and unknown, hidden in obscurity, are to be laid open, and the causes of all these (by the unlocking of nature's secrets) made evident, in their place, by fitting terms and devices. It is trite and commonplace that loadstone draws iron; in the same way too does loadstone attract loadstone. Place the stone which you have seen to have poles clearly distinguished, and marked austral and boreal, in its vessel so as to float; and let the poles be rightly arranged with respect to the plane of the horizon, or, at any rate not much raised or awry: hold in your hand another stone the poles of which are also known; in such
