Page:On the Magnet - Gilbert (1900 translation of 1600 work).djvu/188

 in which the iron works fixed below the circle diverge from the lily  of a rumbe to the east. For navigation to Russia the divergency is. But the compasses which are made at Seville, Lisbon, Rochelle, Bordeaux, Rouen, and throughout all England have an interval of a rumbe. From those differences most serious errors have arisen in navigation, and in the marine science. For as soon as the bearings of maritime places (such as promontories, havens, islands) have been first found by the aid of the mariners' compass, and the times of sea-tide or high water determined from the position of the moon over this or that point (as they say) of the compass, it must be further inquired in what region or according to the custom of what region that compass was made by which the bearings of those places and the times of the sea-tides were first observed and discovered. For one who should use the British compass and should follow the directions of the marine charts of the Mediterranean Sea would necessarily wander very much out of the straight course. So also he that should use the Italian compass in the British, German, or Baltic Sea, together with marine charts that are made use of in those parts, will often stray from the right way. These different constructions have been made on account of the dissimilar variations, so that they might avoid somewhat serious errors in those parts of the world. But Pedro Nuñez seeks the meridian by the mariners' compass, or versorium (which the Spanish call the needle), without taking account of the variation: and he adduces many geometrical demonstrations which (because of his slight use and experience in matters magnetical) rest on utterly vicious foundations. In the same manner Pedro de Medina, since he did not admit variation, has disfigured his Arte de Navegar with many errors.

RATEFUL would be this work to seamen, and would bring the greatest advance to Geography. But B. Porta in chap. 38 of book 7 is mocked by a vain hope and fruitless opinion. For when he supposes that the magnetick needle would follow order and proportion in moving along meridians, so that "the neerer it is to the east, the more it will decline from the Meridian line, toward the east; and the neerer it comes to the west, the