Invention of the Mariner'^s Compass, 245 



most part foreign. In the English 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 kibleh-numa — indicator of the south. 



In these comparisons of the most current terms for the magnet 

 and the magnetic needle and compass, in the eastern and western 

 world, there is not a little to lead one to believe that the discovery 

 of the wonderful properties of the magnet originated in the re- 

 mote Orient, and was gradually communicated to the nations of 

 the 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 polarity of the magnet and its applicability to 

 navigation. 



The earliest explicit mention of the magnetic needle, by any 

 European writer, is in a poetical work of Guyot de Provins, da- 

 ting about the year 1190. The next as to date is found in the 

 Historia Orientalis of Jacques de Yitry, 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 valde 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, and a 

 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 flourished about the middle 

 of the thirteenth century, quotes in a work of his, " De Minerali- 

 bus,^^ a passage from a " treatise concerning stones," attributed to 

 Aristotle, of which the following portion merits particular atten- 

 tion : "Angulus magnetis cujusdam est, cuj us virtus apprehend! 



Vol. XL, No. 2.— Jan .-March, 1841. 32 



