88 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



mitted through so many suspended rings and binding 

 them together by invisible links?" 



u Yet far more astonishing is what I heard about the 

 stone from my brother in the episcopate, Severus, bishop 

 of Milevis. He told me that Bathanarius, once Count of 

 Africa, when the bishop was dining with him, produced a 

 magnet, and held it under a silver plate on which he 

 placed a bit of iron; then as he moved his hand, with the 

 magnet underneath the plate, the iron upon the plate 

 moved about accordingly. The intervening silver was 

 not affected at all, but precisely as the magnet was moved 

 backward and forward below it, no matter how quickly, 

 so was the iron attracted above. I have related what I 

 myself have witnessed. I have related what I was told by 

 one whom I trust as I trust my own eyes." 



Here is the first statement of the movement of a mag- 

 netic body under the control of a moving magnet. Lucre- 

 tius, as we have seen, had told of the to-and-fro vibration 

 of a magnetized ring as the magnetic poles presented to it 

 were reversed, of the fact that brass intervening would not 

 cut off the magnetic virtue, and of the "raving" of the 

 iron filings, but not of the pieces of iron actually following 

 the lodestone, when the latter was moved from place to 

 place. St. Augustine tells all that was known about the 

 magnet at his time. He could have said no more, and the 

 veriest stickler for didactic scientific accuracy, fresh from 

 his Aristotle and his Euclid, could have said it no better. 



"L,et me further say what I have read about this mag- 

 net," he continues. "When a diamond is laid near it, it 

 does not lift iron; or, if it has already lifted it, as soon as 

 the diamond approaches it drops it." That error, 1 for 



1 For other Patristic writers referring to this same delusion see Euge- 

 nius: Opusculorum, P. ii., xxviii. 



Magnes ferri color ferrum suspendere novit 

 Sit praesens adamans, quod tenet ille cadit. 



Also Aldhelm : Aenigmata. Lib. de Septenario et de metris 8. De 

 maguete ferrifero. 



