C 33 ] 
either to make his experiments to fo good an advan- 
tage, as they might otherwife be made, or to give to 
his bars the fame degree of flrength, which he had 
formerly and frequently given to others of the fame 
fort 5 he was therefore defirous to refer himfelf for 
fuch particulars, to what the prefident of the Society 
had already feen and taken minutes of, a few. days 
before j and who thereupon reported, as he faid he 
could faithfully do, to the bed; of his judgment and 
obfervation, the following fadts : 
That having been in company with Mr. John 
Ellicot, of the Society, at Mr. Canton’s houfe in 
Spital-fquare, Bifhopfgate-ftreet ; he had there feen 
him communicate the magnetic virtue, in the manner 
deferibed in his paper, to fix bars of the dimenfions 
therein mention'd, and weighing, one with another, 
about an ounce and three quarters each, Troy weight. 
That tliefe bars were at firft perfectly indifferent as to 
either end of a compafs needle, but that they did any 
of them, after their impregnation, lift by one of their 
ends, ftrongly and diftinftly, full twenty-eight troy 
ounces j the whole operation of giving them their 
virtue having taken up nearly thirty minutes. 
That Mr. Canton had befides fhewn him at the 
fame time two larger bars, each half an inch fquare, 
ten inches and an half in length, and weighing nearly 
ten ounces and twelve penyweight : and that thefe, as 
he was informed, had been, mutatis mutandis , impreg- 
nated in the fame manner as the former. That he 
had not indeed himfelf feen their virtue communi- 
cated to thefe bars, but that he had feen a trial made 
of their flrength, by which one of them had lifted 
E in 
