GRANDAMICUS AND POWER. 405 



haps because of its fostering care, we hear now and then 

 of a new conceit; such as Hartlib's discovery of the ink 

 which gives a dozen copies on a moist sheet of paper ap- 

 plied to the writing; or Colonel Blount's new plows, or 

 Neale's telescopes, or Greatrex's fire engine, or Petty's 

 double-bottomed ship. 1 Evelyn dines with Wilkins in 

 1654, and admires his ingenious apiaries, so made that the 

 honey can be taken without disturbing the bees, his way- 

 wiser, thermometer and monstrous magnet. 2 A year later, 

 he records seeing a u pretty terrella, described with all the 

 circles and showing all the magnetic deviations." 3 



Gilbert had said that the earth is a magnet and does 

 rotate. The Jesuits, contrariwise, and with characteristic 

 casuistry, had said that the earth is not a big magnet, but 

 merely a magnetical body, and that it does not rotate. 

 Others had admitted that the earth rotates, while denying 

 its inherent magnetic quality. Now comes Father Gran- 

 damicus, 4 from the Jesuit College at Fleche, in France, 

 with an effort to reconcile all difficulties on the new and 

 original basis that the earth is a big magnet, and for that 

 very reason does not rotate, because, like the magnet, it 

 has poles, and no magnet has ever been seen, by its own 

 inherent magnetism, to turn itself around its own poles. 

 But Dr. Power 5 was ready with a u confutation," and, to 

 the credit of. the College, he talks of the corporeal efflu- 

 viums of the magnet and the electric about as well as any- 

 body had done before him, and sets the Frenchman right 

 with all the emphasis peculiar to a semi- theological dispu- 

 tation of the times. 



The great impulse which was to start anew the progress 



knight: Hist. England, iv., 174. 

 2 Evelyn's Diary. 13 July, 1654. 

 3 Ibid., 3 July, 1655. 



4 Grandamicus: Nova Demonstratio Immobilitatis Terrae petita ex vir- 

 tute magnetica. Flexiae, 1645. 



5 Power: A confutation of Grandamicus, his magnetical tractate de 

 Immobilitate Terrae. London, 1663. 



