Page:On the Magnet - Gilbert (1900 translation of 1600 work).djvu/106

 opposite the pole of the stone, that virtue is scattered in very large measure towards its extremities; so that the edges of a small round plate of suitable size allure iron wires on every side. This is also apparent in the case of a long iron wand, which, when it has been touched by a magnet in the middle, has a like verticity at either end.



B is a loadstone, C D a long rod magnetized in the middle A; E being the Boreal pole; C is an Austral end or pole; in like manner also the end D is another Austral pole. But observe here the exactness with which a versorium touched by a pole, when a round plate is interposed, turns towards the same pole in the same way as before the interposition, only weaker; the plate not standing in the way, because the vigour is diverted through the edges of the small plate, and passes out of its straight course, but yet the plate retains in the middle the same verticity, when it is in the neighbourhood of that pole, and close to it; wherefore the versorium tends towards the plate, having been touched by the same pole. If a loadstone is rather weak, a versorium hardly turns when a plate is put in between; for the vigour of the rather weak loadstone, being diffused through the extremities, passes less through the middle. But if the plate has been touched in this way by a pole in the middle and has been removed from the stone outside its orbe of virtue, then you will see the point of the same versorium tend in the contrary direction and desert the centre of the small plate, which formerly it desired; for outside the orbe of virtue it has an opposite verticity, in the vicinity the same; for in the vicinity it is, as it were, a part of the loadstone, and has the same pole.



A is an iron plate near the pole, B a versorium which tends with its point towards the centre of the small plate, which has been touched by the pole of the loadstone C. But if the same small plate be