186 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 bow], and so was 
irregular in winding his watch, 
