144 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



garlick doth notwithstanding contract a vert Lei ty from the 

 earth and attracteth trfe southern point of the needle. If 

 also the tooth of lodestor^e Ipe covered and stuck in garlick, 

 it will notwithstanding attract: and needles excited and 

 fixed in garlick until they begin to rust do yet retain their 

 attractive and polary respects." And Sir Vhomas well 

 knew whereof he spoke,., for he had tried actual experi- 

 ments with lodestone and garlic, and wrote down what he 

 saw: wherein he differed from his learned predecessors 

 who merely commented, with more or less profundity, 

 upon one another's speculations. 



To return now to the Laws of Wisbuy : From what has 

 been said concerning the dangers attending the falsifica- 

 tion of the compass, it may easily be inferred that in any 

 code prescribing penalties for maritime offences, would 

 appear a prohibition of the crime, and provision for 

 punishment of the criminal. If in the old Wisbuy 

 statutes such a law appears, then the existence and use of 

 the compass is of course established as of an earlier date 

 than their compilation. Now, if we may credit Olaus 

 Magnus, writing before 1555, there was in the ancient 

 code just such a provision, and he gives it because it is 

 still in force in his own day. It is as follows: 



4 'Whoever, being moved by sedition, shall menace the 

 master or pilot of a ship with the sword, or shall presiime 

 to interfere with the nautical gnomon or compass, and, 

 especially, shall falsify the part of the lodestone upon 

 which the guidance of all may depend, or shall commit 

 like abominable crimes in the ship or elsewhere, shall, if 

 his life be spared, be punished by having the hand which 

 he most uses fastened, by a dagger or knife thrust through 

 it, to the mast or principal timber of the ship, to be with- 

 drawn only by tearing it free." 



The savagely cruel character of the penalty tends to 

 show its antiquity, and affords abundant reason for its 

 abandonment as people became more civilized. But 

 beyond this the language used seems to draw a distinction 



