230 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



is probable that, through the intervention of Baptista 

 Porta, we have always been in full possession of a record 

 of his work: in fact, we may not unreasonably assume, of 

 a better one than such as may have been contained in the 

 brief treatise which was burned: for Porta has told in ex- 

 tenso matters which Sarpi (who seems to have been the 

 prototype of Faraday in his predilection for reducing his 

 results to brief paragraphs and numbering them) would 

 have reported in the most concise and abbreviated form. 



John Baptista Porta was a prodigy. He died in 1615 at 

 the reputed age of seventy, the author of many discoveries 

 and many books the last not all philosophical and scien- 

 tific, for he is said to have written ''fourteen comedies, 

 two tragedies and one tragi-comedy." Despite some con- 

 fusion and discrepancies in dates, it appears to be the fact 

 that he produced his work on Natural Magic, in four 

 books, 1 when only sixteen years of age. It bears the date 

 of 1558, and deals learnedly with astrology, abounds in 

 the wildest vagaries on the generation of animals, dis- 

 cusses agriculture and horticulture in similar manner, 

 ends with an omnium gatherum on domestic economy, 

 and has not, from first to last, a word about the lodestone. 

 Despite his tender age, Porta seems to have been the 

 moving spirit in what was probably a ridotto or club of 

 persons interested in one another and in some especial 

 subject, which met for purposes of discussion and mutual 

 entertainment. Whatever the precise nature of the assem- 

 blage originally may have been, it developed finally into 

 the first of all learned societies, the Academia Secretorum 

 Naturae abbreviated ordinarily into "the Segreti," in 

 which it was an essential condition of membership that the 



Naturalis, sive De Miraculis Rernm Naturalium, lib. iv. lo. 

 Baptista Porta Neapolitan Auctore. Neapoli, 1558. lo. Baptista Portae 

 Neapolitan i: Magiae Naturalis, libri xx. Neapoli, 1589. There have 

 been many editions in translations. 



