248 Invention of the Mariner'' s Compass. 



steered to the south by means of the magnet. But the Chinese 

 were acquainted with the dechnation of the needle, also, a long 

 while before it was supposed to be first discovered by Cohimbus. 

 In a medical natural history, composed between the years 1111 and 

 1117, the author gives the following notice of the magnet and of 

 its properties. This is the most ancient description of the mag- 

 net found as yet in any Chinese book : " The magnet is covered 

 over with httle bristles slightly red, and its superficies is rough. 

 It attracts iron, and unites itself with it ; and for this reason it is 

 commonly "called ' the stone which licks up iron.' When an 

 iron point is rubbed upon the magnet, it acquires the property of 

 pointing to the south ; yet it always declines eastward, and is not 

 perfectly true to the south. On this account, a thread of new 

 cotton is taken and attached by a particle of wax as large as a 

 mustard-seed, exactly to the middle of the iron, which is thus 

 suspended in some place where there is no wind. The needle 

 then points, without variation, to the south. If the needle is 

 passed through a little tube of thin reed, which is afterwards 

 placed on water, it directs to the south, but always with a decli- 

 nation to the point joz'n^, that is to say, east | south." The accu- 

 racy of this observation, referring it to the capital city of the 

 empire, is confirmed by P. Amiot, who, after taking magnetic 

 observations at Peking for several years, found the variation of 

 the needle there to be constantly from 2° to 2P SO''. 



Upon a due consideration of all these historic data, in connec- 

 tion with the comparison of the European and Oriental names of 

 the magnet, the magnetic needle, and the compass, it cannot ap- 

 pear to any one to be a rash conclusion, that the knowledge of 

 the natural production, as well as of its wonderful applicability 

 in navigation, existed first in China, and was communicated by 

 the intervention of the Arabs to the nations of Europe, probably 

 on occasion of the more frequent intercourse between Europe and 

 the East to which the Crusades gave rise. 



Bat before the Chinese had applied the magnet to use in navi- 

 gation, it was employed among them in the construction o( mag- 

 netic cars by which travellers on land directed their course. Not 

 to cite those stories of the Chinese relative to these cars which 

 lose themselves in a fabulous antiquity, the earliest historic allu- 

 sion to them dates in the first half of the second century, when 

 the Emperor Tcheou Koung, as it is related, gave to some em- 

 bassadors from Tonkin and Cochin-China " five travelling cars, 



