LODESTONE SUPERSTITIONS. 159 



end of the needle which points to the north the north 

 pole, when, as a matter of fact, its inherent polarity of 

 course is south. 



After this follow a series of falsehoods which we shall 

 find afterwards cropping up everywhere. We are told that 

 the magnet attracts lead because it is the softest of metals, 

 and that the magnetic ardor penetrates and corrodes stones 

 and tarnishes their brilliancy. That some magnets attract 

 gold, others silver, and others iron ; and that, if the gold 

 be in a fine powder and mixed with sand, the magnet will 

 separate out every particle of the metal. 



This last is the first suggestion of the process of mag- 

 netic separation of metals from other substances mixed 

 with them. The removal of iron in this way from an ad- 

 mixture with sand, etc., is elaborately described, as we 

 shall see, by Porta and others, in the sixteenth century ; 

 so that the same idea of late years applied to the magnetic 

 extraction of the same metal from its crushed ores, is of 

 much antiquity. 



Lastly, there is described the "creagus" or "flesh mag- 

 net," a stone "which, when once attached to the body, 

 cannot be removed without tearing with it the flesh, 

 although, in the latter, not a drop of blood will be found. " 

 This was probably nothing more than pumice, which ad- 

 heres slightly to the lips or other moist surface of the body; 

 but, none the less, the delusion lasted well ; for, three cen- 

 turies later, the wonder books told of "a kind of adamant 

 which draweth unto it fleshe, and the same so strongly 

 that it hath power to knit and tie together two mouthes 

 of contrary persons and drawe the heart of a man out of his 

 body without offending any part of him." 



1 Fenton : Certaine Secrete Wonders of Nature. 1569. The Rev. Henry 

 N. Hudson, in his excellent edition of Shakespeare, cites this passage in 

 apparent explanation of Hermia's speech : " You draw me, you hard- 

 hearted adamant," etc. (Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II, Sc. i). 

 There will be some, I fancy, who will be unwilling to take the poet in 

 quite so literal a way, or to accord to him less play of imagination in the 

 premises than was shown by Gautier d'Epinois. 



