738 SCIENCE IN EARLY ENGLAND. 



Lastly, Dante's preceptor, Brimetto Latini, writing about 1260, just 

 after a visit to Soger Bacon, says: "He shewed me the magnet, an 

 ugly black stone to which iron spontaneously attaches itself. They 

 touch it with a needle and thrust this into a straw, then put it in 

 the water; it swims, and the point turns toward the polar star. If the 

 night be dark, and one can see neither star nor moon, the mariners can 

 keep their right course." Bacon is the only writer, as far as I know, 

 who mentions magnetic repulsion, "as the lamb flees the wolf," he 

 puts it. 



IsTeckam's remarks on animals are of little interest, as they reflect 

 all the popular errors. He is the only author, except Bacon and Grosse- 

 teste, who deals with optics. He describes the well-known basin and 

 coin experiment (this, however, was known to Cleomedes in the first 

 century A. D.), and speaks of glass mirrors. He tells us that in a 

 concave mirror the image is inverted, and in a plane or convex one 

 erect, but remarks despairingly, " Who can assign a sufficient reason 

 for these things?" An interesting observation, which he might have 

 learned from Eratosthenes, of the third century B. 0., is that verticals 

 to the earth's surface must be inclined to one another ; he goes rather 

 too far, however, and says that the walls of buildings must diverge, so 

 as to be in the direction of the earth's radii. He notes that all ponder- 

 able things tend naturally toward the center. 



Here, also, we find an interesting fable, that the wren, sitting on a 

 branch on the 1st of March, complained to February about the mild- 

 ness of the weather. She at length became abusive on the subject, 

 whereupon he went to his brother March and obtained permission to 

 influence the weather for two days. This he did with such effect that 

 the bird, battered by hailstones and half frozen, lamented that the gen- 

 tle February was past. It is well known to meteorologists that there 

 are nearly always three cold days between the 11th and 14th of April, 

 and that in the old style these dates would fall at the beginning of the 

 month : but I am not aware that a converse state of things has been 

 noted in March. The old Scotch rhyme which follows relates to the 

 "borrowed" days of April: 



March said to Aperill, 



I see three hoggs upon a hill, 



And if you'll lends me dayes three, 



I'll find a way to make them dee. 



The first o' them was wind and wet; 



The second o' them was snaw and sleet ; 



The third o' them was sic a freeze, 



It froze the birds' nests to the trees. 



When the three days were past and gane, 



The three silly hoggs came hirplin hame. 



The word "hogg" here is a farmer's term for a young lamb between 

 the time of its being weaned and having its first fleece cut. 

 In Iioger Bacon, the last author with whom I shall deal, one feels 



