1 56 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



reading this, I chanced to be talking to a village clock- 

 maker about watches. We were discussing what a dif- 

 ficulty it was sometimes to get a watch to go right. I 

 said I had heard that watches sometimes got magnetised, 

 and went on in the most erratic manner until the mag- 

 netism was counteracted. Ah yes, he said, he recol- 

 lected a case in the shop where he learnt his trade ; they 

 had a watch brought to them which had got magnetised, 

 and he believed the influence was at last removed by the 

 use of onions. Instantly memory ran back to Ptolemy's 

 garlic ; perhaps after all there was something in his 

 statement ; at all events, it is very curious that the sub- 

 ject should come up again in this unexpected way, in 

 the darkness, as it were, of a village where the very 

 name of the great mathematician was unknown. The 

 clockmaker fumbled with an anecdote, and tried to tell 

 me of another sort of magnetism which had got into a 

 watch. The watch would not keep time, nothing would 

 make it ; till by-and-by it occurred to him to suggest to 

 the owner to wind it up at breakfast-time instead of at 

 night. For he fancied the owner became a little mag- 

 netised himself at night over the genial bowl, and so was 

 irregular in winding his watch. 



