Page:On the Magnet - Gilbert (1900 translation of 1600 work).djvu/129

 its poles are increased. And so the Northern pole of a terrella in such a position lifts up a larger spike than the Southern pole, if the Southern pole is turned away. Similarly the Southern pole in a proper and natural arrangement, acquiring strength from the earth or from a larger terrella, attracts and retains larger rods of iron. In the other part of the terrestrial globe toward the South, as also in the Austral portion of a terrella, the reasoning is converse; for the Southern pole of the terrella being turned away is more robust, as also the Northern pole when turned round. The more a region on the earth is distant from the æquinoctial (as also in a larger terrella), the larger is the accession of strength perceived; near the æquator, indeed, the difference is small, but on the æquator itself null; at the poles finally it is greatest.

ARDAN writes that out of iron and the Herculean stone can be made a perpetual motion machine; not that he himself had ever seen one, but only conceived the idea from an account by Antonius de Fantis, of Treves. Such a machine he describes, Book 9, De Rerum Varietate. But they have been little practised in magnetick experiments who forge such things as that. For no magnetick attraction can be greater (by any skill or by any kind of instrument) than the retention. Things which are joined and those which are approaching near are retained with a greater force than those which are enticed and set in motion, and are moved; and that coition is, as we have shown above, a motion of both, not an attraction of one. Such a machine Peter Peregrinus feigned many centuries before or else depicted one which he had received from others, and one which was much better fitted for the purpose. Johannes Taysnier published it also, spoiled by wretched figures, and copied out the whole theory of it word for word. O that the gods would at length bring to a miserable end such fictitious, crazy, deformed labours, with which the minds of the studious are blinded!