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14 a fresh increase of salary was voted, partly on the very ground of his increasing family. On the whole he was very well treated by the republic, his salary, which now amounted to about £115, being higher than that of any previous mathematical professor, and his new doctrines being permitted without any protest from the Council.

The next new subject attacked was magnetism. Galileo admired the work of Gilbert of Colchester, the famous author of "De Magnete," whose habit of mind was very similar to that of Galileo in its reliance upon experiment and its bold speculations. Galileo invented an armature for increasing the lifting power of a "loadstone," finding that small magnets were more efficient than large ones, and that when shaped specially they could be made to support a mass of iron weighing some forty times their own weight.