= 
“most part foreign. In the | 
\ igoeitia of Oita Compal. we 245 — 
tm 
or 
provinces of India. it is called 
compass, from the English; and in the Cingalese of Ceylon, 
kompdsouwa, a corruption of compass. 'The Hindostanee has 
adopted the Persian term kibléh-numa—indicator of the south. f 
In these comparisons of the most current terms for the magnet 
and the magnetic needle and compass, in the eastern and western 
wor e is not.a little to lead one to believe that the discovery 
of t onderful properties of the magnet originated in the re- 
mote Orient, and was gradually communicated to the nations of 
e west. But there are historic notices of the magnetic needle 
and compass, which also point to the east as the field of the first’ 
discovery of the poueky of the magnet and its b -mememaadet to 
navigation. 
The earliest explicit méntion of the magnetic needle,. by. any 
_ European: writer, is in a poetical work of Guyot de Provine. da- 
ting about the year 1190. 'The next as to date is found in the 
istoria Orientalis of Jacques de Vitry, referring to the year 
1204: “ Adamas in India reperitur—ferrum occulta quadam na- 
tura ad se trahit. Acus ferrea, postquam adamantem contigerit, 
ad stellam septentrionalem, quae velut axis fermamenti, aliis ver- 
gentibus, non movetur, semper convertitur, unde valdé necessarius 
est navigantibus in mari,’”’ It would be difficult to give any au- 
thority to this passage, and not recognize the east as the source of 
Knowledge, among Europeans, of the polarity of the magnet. 
Not long before the year 1260, Brunetto Latini, “ maitre du divin 
Dante,” being on a journey in England, saw the magnet and the 
Magnetic needle for the first time, in visiting Roger Bacon, anda 
fragment of a letter of his, written on the occasion, which has 
been preserved, describes them thus: “He shew me the magnet, 
a disagreeably looking black stone it readily unites with iron; a 
small needle is taken into the hand and fastened in a bit of reed, 
then it is put upon a surface of water, and one stands over it, and 
the point turns towards the star, (the polar star;) in case the night 
is obscure, and neither star nor moon is seen, the mariner may 
keep to his right course.” 
Albertus Magnus, of Swabia, who Gourished about the middle 
of me thirteenth century, quotes in a work of his, ‘De Minerali- 
a passage from a “treatise concerning stones,” attributed to 
Gua. of which the following portion merits particular atten- 
tion: « Deacon magnetis cujusdam est, cujus virtus apprehendi 
Vol. xt, No, tage ~March, 1841, 32. 
