you will see it lie straight and parallel to the axis of the magnet due to some hidden conformation of nature, similar to poles in a sphere lying straight upon the horizon, as is clear in the spike DHFC of the figure ADBCF. But if you apply the magnet according to another position of the terrella little earth or at some latitude from the equator, such as at points G and L, you will discover, not without astonishment, that the spike is gradually lifted from one side above the horizon and depressed on the other below it, according to the latitude of the magnetic place.

In the third position of the terrella, namely in a most oblique sphere, the iron or spike will stand perpendicularly upon the pole of the magnet, as appears in the line AB, because the pole of the stone is placed at the top, and the iron, tending directly toward the pole, touches the pole, as is clearly apparent in the figure.

THEOREM VIII.

The magnet occasionally declines from the pole.

It is discovered that the magnet does not preserve the polar line so exactly in all places that it does not occasionally vary, deviate, or deflect from its meridian. For in the middle of lands and continents there is no variation, as is generally the case in the middle of seas and oceans; yet on the margins of those lands and the shores of the oceans, the variation is often large, though not as great as a little further out in the open sea. In the Azores Islands, as well as on the Peloponnesian shore, it suffers no variation, whose meridian passes through the greatest and highest regions of all Europe: through Achaia, Macedonia, Podolia, Transylvania, Lithuania, Novgorod, Karelia, Lapponia, Bothnia, and Biarmia. However, around Cape St. Augustine on the shores of America, it varies, but 50 miles from land toward the east it varies more, and at 80 miles, even