ON THE MAGNET, BOOK I.

catchword: nature

and a cold inquiry into hidden causes. The ingenious philosopher of great distinction, Fracastorius, seeks the reason for the magnet's direction and imagines magnetic mountains in the Hyperborean regions that attract magnetic iron. Many follow this opinion, which has been accepted by others in a certain way, in their own writings as well as in geographic tables, sea charts, and descriptions of the globe. They dream of magnetic poles and huge crags that are distinct from the poles of the earth. Before Fracastorius, there existed a small work by a certain Peter Peregrinus, written more than two hundred years ago, learned enough for its time, which some think stemmed from the opinions of the Englishman Roger Bacon of Oxford. In this book, the arguments for magnetic direction are sought from the poles of the sky and the heavens themselves. From this Peter Peregrinus, Johannes Taisner of Hainaut extracted a little book and published it as something new. Cardanus celebrates the rising of the star in the tail of the Great Bear, which he posited as the cause of variation, thinking indeed that the variation is always certain based on the star's rising. But the variety of variation according to the change of region, and the changes in many places, even being irregular in southern regions, do not admit a singular dominion of a star from a northern rising. The Coimbra College seeks the cause from some part of the sky near the pole. Scaliger, in his 131st exercise against Cardanus, introduces a celestial cause unknown to himself and terrestrial magnets that have never been found; not from those iron-bearing mountains, but from that force which was their creator, namely, from that part of the sky which looms over that northern point. This learned man adorns this opinion with many words and crowns it with many subtleties in the margin; but these reasons are not so subtle. Martinus Cortefius thinks the attractive place is beyond the poles and the mobile heavens. A certain Frenchman, Bessardus, observes the pole of the zodiac with no less vanity. Iacobus Seuertius of Paris, among the few things he recites, invents new errors about the different magnets of different lands in their direction; and then also about the eastern and western parts of the magnet. Robert Norman, an Englishman, posits a point and a "respective" place, not an attractive one, toward which magnetic iron would aim, not because it attracts it itself. Franciscus Maurolycus treats a few problems about the magnet according to the worn-out opinions of others, assuming that variation is caused by a certain magnetic island mentioned by Olaus Magnus. Iosephus Costa, being completely ignorant of the magnet, nevertheless pours out idle words about it. Liuius Sanutus, in his geography in Italian, argues much about the first magnetic meridian, about magnetic poles, whether they are in the sky or on the earth, and about an instrument for finding longitude; but because the magnetic nature is not understood,