124 Remarks on Professor Hansteen's 
sions, by the circumstance of a volcano having opened on a hill v 
about thirty miles from Bhooj ; and about ten days after the 
first shock, a loud noise, like the discharge of cannon, was heard 
at Porebunder. The sound came from the east, and was sup- 
posed to indicate the bursting of one or more volcanoes in that 
direction. Undulations of the earth had formerly been felt in 
this district, but had never been accompanied with any distress- 
ing effects. About two years ago, several of the British officers 
encamped in the neighbourhood of Bhooj experienced a slight 
shock ; but it was so slight that others of them were not sen- 
sible of it. It is to be hoped, however, that none will ever be 
attended with such a horrible catastrophe as the one we have been 
describing ; for the distress occasioned by it is represented by al- 
most all the writers as beyond their ability to describe. 
Art. XXIII. — Remarks on Professor Hansteen^s Inquiries 
concerning the Magnetism of the Earth 
The properties of magnetism, though interesting in them- 
selves, and presenting an immediate application to the practical 
purposes of life, have not been investigated with the rapidity or 
success which might have been expected. From the times of 
Pliny and Lucretius, by whom the power of the loadstone to at- 
tract iron, and to attract or repel another loadstone, is mention- 
ed as a fact well known since the remotest times, above a thou- 
sand years elapsed before its polarity was detected, and applied 
to navigation j*. Three centuries after the compass came into 
* Untersuchungen ITber den Magnetismus der Erde, von Christopher Hansteen, 
Professor der Angewandten Mathematik an der Norwegischen Universitat, uber- 
setzt von P. Freschow Hanson, KdnigL Norw. Department-vollmachtigen und Land- 
cadetten-Lehrer. Erster Theil : die mechanischen Erscheinungen des Magneten. 
4to, pp. 502. Christiania, 1817. 
■f Not only the author, but the date of this invention, seenas to lie hid in impene- 
trable darkness. Guyot de Provins, and other trouveres or troubadours, have been 
quoted, to shew that it was familiar to Europeans about the middle of the 12th cen- 
tury : some expressions of an Icelandic historian appear to carry it farther back at 
least fifty years. “ Are Frode,” (says Mr Hansteen), “ by whom the Landnamobok 
of Iceland, or the account of the discovery of that island was written, mentions, 
(Part I. chap. 2. p. 7.), that Floke Vilgerdarson, a renowned vikings or pirate, the 
