LUCRETIUS ON THE MAGNET. 47 



The Mahometans have always ridiculed the tradition, and 

 certainly it is exceedingly difficult, short of assuming it 

 to have been made out of whole cloth, to find any basis 

 for it in the facts above stated. There is, however, an- 

 other version, credited to one Bremond, 1 an indefinite 

 "traveler of Marseilles," who asserts that he saw "above 

 Mahomet's tomb a magnet, two feet long and three fingers 

 thick, from which is suspended a golden crescent enriched 

 with jewels, by means of a big nail in the middle;" but 

 this obviously lacks the essential feature of the something 

 being held floating in the air by magnetic attraction. 



Meanwhile, the knowledge of the magnet had spread 

 beyond the confines of Greece and Asia Minor, in other 

 directions than to the southward. It had moved to the 

 west and to Rome. The Roman, L,ucretius, 2 in that great- 

 est of all didactic poems, "On the Nature of Things," 

 tells of the Samothracian rings as still existing (95 to 52 

 B. C.), and as having been seen by himself. 



"You may see, sometimes," he says, "five or more sus- 

 pended in succession and tossing about in the light airs, 

 one always hanging down from one and attached to its 

 lower side, and each in turn, one from the other, experi- 

 encing the binding power of the stone : with such a con- 

 tinued current its force flies through all." 



Here is the first suggestion of a moving current travers- 

 ing a conductor, in centra-distinction to a soul or virtue 

 merely pervading the object. The distinction between the 



lodestones (Diet, de Biyle. Mahom. Rem. E E. FF.). Without any 

 philosophical inquiries, it may suffice that, i. The prophet was not buried 

 at Mecca ; and 2. That his tomb at Medina, which has been visited by 

 millions, is placed on the ground. (Reland : de Relig. Moham., 1. ii., c. 

 19, p. 209-211.) 



1 Azuni : Dissertation sur la Boussole, Paris, 1810, p. 27. 



2 Lucretius : De Natura Rerum, Book 6. Translated by H. A. J. 

 Munro. Cambridge, 1866. 



