120 



HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



satisfactory, but inevitable. In tracing the history of the com- 

 pass, we must naturally begin with the magnet. 



The ancients were fully acquainted with the loadstone, and 

 with its power of attracting iron, though they were totally 

 ignorant of its polarity. That they were so, is evident from the 

 fact that the classic authors and ancient works upon navigation 

 and kindred subjects do not furnish one word upon the subject. 

 Claudian has left, in one of his idyls, a long description of the 

 stone, and of its peculiar, indeed, magical, affinity for iron. 

 Had he entertained the most distant idea that this stone coul 1 

 communicate to a steel needle the power of indicating the north, 

 it is not to be supposed for an instant that he would have omitted 

 mentioning it. The earliest name of the loadstone was Hercules' 

 Stone, which was soon changed to magnes, from the fact that ft 

 was found in abundance in a region called Magnesia, in Lydi??,. 

 Hence our word magnet. It was not till the fourth century of 

 our era that the quality of repelling as well as of attracting iron 

 seems to have been discovered. Marcellus, the physician of Theo- 

 dosius the Great, is the first author who mentions this new quality. 



The Romans, who acquired a knowledge of the magnet from 

 the Greeks, preserved the name, though several of their authors, 

 and Pliny among them, mention a tradition, that the magnet was 

 so called from a shepherd named Magnes, who was the first to 

 discover a mine of loadstone, by the nails in his shoes clinging 

 to the metal. 



The first mention in European history of the polarity of the 

 magnetized needle, and of its importance to mariners, occurs in a 

 satirical French poem written in 1190 by one Guyot de Provins. 

 His object was to level, by implication, an invective against the 

 Court of Rome ; and he did it in the following neat manner. 

 The translator has endeavored to preserve the quaint style of 

 the original: 



"As for our Father the Pope, 

 I would he were like the star 



