214 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



If this you can denie, 



then seeme to make reply, 

 And let the painefull sea-man judge, 



the which of us doth lye. 



THE MARINER'S JUDGMENT. 

 The Loadstone is the stone, 



the oiiely stone alone, 

 Deserving praise above the rest, 



whose vertues are unknowne. 



THE MARCHANT'S VERDICT. 



The Diamonds bright, the Saphires brave, 



are stones that beare the name, 

 But flatter not, and tell the troath, 



Magnes deserves the same. 



Then he reviews, briefly, the existing knowledge of what 

 he calls the "attractive point," or the point to which the 

 compass needle is directed. This point, he says, attracts 

 the compass, while the compass in turn respects that 

 point. He refutes the doctrine of the magnetic rocks at 

 the North Pole; "for," he says, "if the compasse or 

 needle were drawn towards the North part by any Attrac- 

 tion of the Magnes stones in those parts imagined, why 

 then should not the Compasse or Needle shew the same 

 effect in mooving towards the Hand of Elba, in the Levant 

 seas, where are great quan title of these Stones? and yet 

 Shippes sayling within a myle of this Hand, yea, and into 

 Porto Feraro, a Towne of the same He, within a quarter 

 of a myle of a huge Rocke of these stones, the Compasse 

 or needle is not found any thing to be drawne or changed, 

 nor the Attraction of this huge rocke to extend so farre as 

 one quarter of a myle." 



He disputes the opinions of Pedro de Media and of Mar- 

 tin Cortes, who denied the existence of any variation of the 

 compass at all, and adhered to the old notion, which, as I 

 have already pointed out, was that generally accepted prior 

 to the time of Columbus, namely, that aberration of the 

 needle was due to errors in the instrument ; or, as Nor- 



