Page:On the Magnet - Gilbert (1900 translation of 1600 work).djvu/132

 mate natural bodies do not attract, and are not attracted by, others on the earth, excepting magnetically or electrically. Wherefore it is not true that there are magnets which attract gold or other metals; because a magnetick substance draws nothing but magnetick substances. Though Fracastorio says that he has shown a magnet drawing silver; if this were true, it must have happened on account of iron skilfully mixed with that silver or concealed in it, or else because nature (as she does sometimes, but rarely) had mixed iron with the silver; iron indeed is rarely mixed with silver by nature; silver with iron very rarely or never. Iron is mixed with silver by forgers of false coin or from the avarice of princes in the coining of money, as was the case with the denarius of Antony, provided that Pliny is recording a true incident. So Cardan (perhaps deceived by others) says that there is a certain kind of loadstone which draws silver; he adds a most foolish test of this: "If therefore" (he says) "a slender rod of silver be steeped in that in which a versatory needle has stood, it will turn toward silver (especially toward a large quantity) although it be buried; by this means anyone will be able easily to dig up concealed treasures." He adds that "it should be very good stone, such as he has not yet seen." Nor indeed will either he or anyone else ever see such a stone or such an experiment. Cardan brings forward an attraction of flesh, wrongly so named and very dissimilar from that of the loadstone; for his magnes creagus or flesh-magnet, from the experiment that it sticks to the lips, must be hooted out from the assembly of loadstones, or by all means from the family of things attractive. Lemnian earth, ruddle, and very many minerals do this, and yet they are fatuously said to attract. He will have it that there is another loadstone, as it were, a third species, into which, if a needle is driven and afterwards stuck into the body, it is not felt. But what has attraction to do with stupefaction, or stupor with a Philosopher's intellect, when he is discoursing about attraction? There are many stones, both found in nature and made by art, which have the power of stupefying. Sulphur flame is said by some to attract, because it consumes certain metals by its power of penetration. So white naphtha attracts flame, because it gives off and exhales an inflammable vapour, on which account it is kindled at some distance, just as the smoke of a recently extinguished candle takes fire again from another flame; for fire creeps to fire through an inflammable medium. Why the sucking fish Echineis or the Remora should stay ships has been variously treated by Philosophers, who are often accustomed to fit this fable (as many others) to their theories, before they find out whether the thing is so in nature. Therefore, in order that they may support and agree with the fatuities of the ancients, they put forward even the most fatuous ratiocinations and ridiculous problems, cliffs that attract, where the