.572 THE MAUINKIl's COMPASS. 



autem in India primum repertus, clavis crepidarim baculique cuspid^ 

 hcBvens, cum idem magnes armenta piasceret ; postea passim est 

 inventus." Another Latin name for the loadstone, equally in use in 

 the middle ages, was that of adamas, although this name originally 

 designated the diamond. Cardinal "James de Vitry, who, about the 

 year 1218, wrote his Oriental History, thus expresses himself: 



" Ada)7iasin India reperitur ferrum occulta quddam naturd ad se 



trahit. Acus ferrea postquam adamentem contigerit, ad stellam, sep- 

 tentrionalem, qua velut axis fermamenti aliis vergentibus, non movetur 

 semper convertitur : unde valde necessarius est navigantibus in mari," 



In the Glossary of Ducange, the word adamas is rendered also by 

 magnes, and in French by aimant. This celebrated lexicographer 

 derives it from the Latin verb udamare ; but it does not seem very 

 probable that aimant in French should come from the adamas of 

 corrupt Latin. The learned Carpentier, author of the Supplement to 

 the Glossary o^ Ducange has therefore on this point endeavoured to 

 refute his illustrious predecessor, by saying of the word adatnas, 

 " Videtur esse magnes. Gall, aimant, vox Grcecce originis. At vero 

 nostris olini adamas priiis dicebatur aimant, qudmvocaretur d.\am2inl ; 

 quae utraque vox a verbo adamas originem habet." 



The word 'Adafiac, that some lexicographers have supposed to be 

 derived from a^a^aw — that cannot be subdued (thus the indomitable), 

 appears to me to be of oriental origin, and to come from almas, that 

 is still the general name for the diamond throughout the whole of 

 Upper Asia. It cannot be supposed that almas is rather a derivative 

 from adamas, for it was through Upper Asia that the Greeks ac- 

 quired a knowledge of the diamonds of India, Europe having no 

 mines of that precious stone. 



The Italians give to the loadstone the name of calamita, a word of 

 which it is difficult to ascertain the origin; but the term is ralherGreek 

 than Italian, for the modern Greeks still call the loadstone KaXa^i'ru. 

 Several of the learned have indulged the unfortunate idea of wishing 

 to find this word in the Hebrew khallamich, which signifies flint, rock, 

 hard stone — epithets unsuitable to the loadstone. The only probable 

 explanation of the word calamita appears to me to have been given by 

 G. Fournier, who says, " They (the French mariners) call it also 

 catamite, the true meaning of which in French is a green frog, 

 because, before the discovery of the invention of suspending 

 and balancing the magnetic needle on a pivot, our ancestors enclosed 

 it in a glass phial half full of water, and made it, by means of two 

 small motes, float on the water like a frog. Hugo Bertius, wlio 

 lived in the time of Saint Louis, at the same period, or nearly, with 

 Guyot de Provins, says, that this was the device the sailors of his 

 days made use of to find out the north in the night." I am of 

 the opinion of the learned Jesuit in the main, but the word catamite 

 to designate the little green frog-, called now the graisset, the raine, 

 or the rainette, is Greek, as we see from the following passage of 

 Pliny : " Ea rana qiiam Grceci calamitem vacant, quoniam inter 

 arundineSfJruticesque vivat, minima omnium est et viridissitna.^' The 

 word calamita, to denote the loadstone, is likewise used in other Eu- 

 ropean idioms. We meet again with it in the dialect of the Latin 



