350 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



Parma, produced, in the first complete Italian treatise on 

 the magnet, a record of study which had extended over 

 many years, and which, among other things, resulted in 

 the first electrical discoveries following those of Gilbert. 



This is the same Cabseus to whom I have already referred 

 in a preceding chapter, apparently as advocating the hear- 

 say discoveries of Leonardo Garzoni against those of Fra 

 Paolo Sarpi. His name is often mentioned in the histor- 

 ical retrospects of electrical progress which have appeared 

 during the last century or so, apparently solely because 

 of his having added some more electrics to Gilbert's list; 

 these being "white wax and anything made of wax which 

 is hard and may be rubbed . . , several gums, such as 

 gum elemi, gum carab, gum from mastic, pix, which is 

 called Spanish, and gypsum, not burnt," a slender enough 

 addition to the science, although of interest as being a real 

 advance beyond Gilbert. His principal discovery, how- 

 ever, is of very much more importance than a few addi- 

 tional electrics, although the fact seems to have remained 

 unrecognized. 



Cabseus, while admitting the accuracy of Gilbert's ex- 

 perimental work and of the physical distinctions which 

 Gilbert points out between the amber and the lodestone, 

 refuses to accept either Gilbert's theory of electric effluvia 

 or his general dictum of the attractive quality of bodies 

 concreted from humor. "His words," says Cabseus, "are 

 put together with ornate elegance, but I do not see that 

 they explain any mode of attraction. Plenty of things 

 which are hard and yet are concreted of humor have no 

 attraction, and many things attract which do not appear 

 to be concreted of humor." Floating bodies do not attract 

 by humor, but through "gravity and levity." If wet 

 bodies do adhere, that is due to agglutinating action of the 

 interposed liquid. Cabseus is not here attacking Gilbert's 

 theories merely from a spirit of opposition. He has found 

 some strange facts, and Gilbert's effluvium notion refuses 

 to be squared with them. He does not understand these 



