THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



Gasserum, L. nunc primum promulgatus. Augsburgi in Suevis,) ap- 

 peared iu 1558, at which time manuscript copies of the letter were 

 regarded as very rare. At the present time, several codices are known 

 to exist there being two in the Vatican, and six in the Bodleian 

 Library of different dates, besides others elsewhere. In 1562 the material 

 portion of the work was stolen by John Taisnier (Opusculum Perp. Mem. 

 Diguiss De Natura Magnetis et ejus effectibus. * * Authore Joanne 

 Taisuierio Haunonio, etc. Coloniae, 1562), and published as his own in a 

 treatise on the Nature of the Magnet and its Effects. The only English 

 version of Peregrinus' letter is a translation of Taisnier's work by one 

 Richard Eden, which seems to have been originally printed without 

 date, and then reprinted m 1579 by Richard Jugge, London. 



The perpetual motion of Peregrinus was also copied by a writer of the 

 1 6th century Antonio De Fantis, of Treviso and to him the invention 

 cf the apparatus is most commonly ascribed by authors subsequent to 

 Jerome Cardan. The rotary magnetic sphere of Peregrinus was also 

 plagiarized by Cornelius van Drebbel, who, in his letter to James I., of 

 England, his protector, solemnly avers his ability to construct the ap- 

 paratus so that it will automatically operate. Cardan: De Varietale 

 Rerum, 1553 lib. 9, c. 48; Vuecher: Les Secrets et Merveilles de Nature. 

 Lyon, 1596, 912. Cornelii Drebbeli Belgae Epistola ad Sapient. Bret. 

 Monarchi. Jacobum, De Perp. Mobiles Inventione. Hamburg, 1628, p. 

 66. The possibility of Peregrinus' apparatus is doubted by Gilbert (De 

 Magnete, 1600, lib. vi., c. iv.), and denied altogether by Galileo. (Opera, 

 Florence, 1842, 443-9.) 



In the beginning of the present century a mythical person was in- 

 vented, one Peter Adsiger, and to him a few facts, which some one had 

 exhumed from the old manuscripts or the Augsburg edition of the Let- 

 ter, were duly credited ; so that, for a long time, the names of Peter 

 Peregrinus and Peter Adsiger were found in the text-books and histories, 

 and so appear even up to to-day. But the name " Adsiger " was simply 

 a translator's blunder, and is a part of the Latin dedication of the letter 

 which Peter writes to Sigerus (Ad Sigerum). On such small errors as 

 this, fame too often depends. 



Some question has been raised as to whether certain of Peregrinus' 

 discoveries were not earlier made by Dr. Jean de St. Amand, who was a 

 celebrated physician and a canon of the cathedral church of Tournay. 

 He lived "after the year 1261," but just when is not known. He seems 

 to have been merely a copyist who restates Peregrinus' conclusions in 

 an obscure way. 



