SUPPLEMENT. 
15 
making certain learned and expert men, my friends, acquainted 
in this matter, they advised me to frame an instrument, to make 
some exact trial how much the needle touched by the stone would 
decline, or what greatest angle it would make with the plane of 
the horizon. 
" Seeing that it is manifest tnat there is a declining of the needle, 
and that the same is not caused by any ponderous or weighty 
matters in the virtue received from the stone, it may be demanded ? 
bv what means this declining or elevation happenetb, and in 
which of the two points consists the action or cause thereof? 
“ Peradventure you will say, as others have imagined, that it 
is in the south point of the needle, elevated by the attractive vir¬ 
tue of some point of the heavens that way. Perchance you will 
vield it rather to be in the north point of the needle, which by 
some attractive point in the earth or in the heavens, beyond the 
earth that way, is drawn down and caused to decline; and it de¬ 
clining, of necessity the other south point opposite must needs be 
lifted up. 
“ Your reason towards the earth carrieth some probability, but 
if I prove there be no attractive or drawing property in neither 
of those two parts, then is the attractive point lost, and falsely 
called the point attractive. But because there is a certain point 
that the needle always respecteth or sheweth to be void, and with¬ 
out any attractive property, in my judgment, this point ought 
rather to be called the point respective. 
“ And further, if it may be proved that there is no attractive or 
drawing power in that point, the power and action in that point 
condemned, then of necessity the power and property, without 
any external cause remaineth only in the stone, and after the 
needle being touched with it, having the same power and pro¬ 
perty in it that the stone hath in every respect. 
“ Now, as the needle hath this apparent property in declining 
under the horizon, to show the point respective, so it is most ma¬ 
nifest that in declining it hath a property in varying or departing 
from the poles, even as the point respective openeth or showelh 
a greater or lesser distance between the said point respective and 
the pole or axletree of the earth ; and this departing is called the 
