Page:On the Magnet - Gilbert (1900 translation of 1600 work).djvu/235



ITHERTO our subject hath been the loadstone and things magnetical: how they conspire together, and are acted upon, how they conform themselves to the terrella and to the earth. Now must we consider separately the globe itself of the earth. Those experiments which have been proved by means of the terrella, how magnetick things conform themselves to the terrella, are all or at least the principal and most important of them, displayed by means of the earth's Body: And to the earth things magnetical are in all respects associate. First, as in the terrella the æquator, meridians, parallels, axis, poles are natural boundaries, as numerous experiments make plain: So also in the earth these boundaries are natural, not mathematical only (as all before us used to suppose). These boundaries the same experiments display and establish in both cases alike, in the earth no less than in the terrella. Just as on the periphery of a terrella a loadstone or a magnetick piece of iron is directed to its proper pole: so on the earth's surface are there turnings-about, peculiar, manifest, and constant on either side of the æquator. Iron is indued with verticity by being extended toward a pole of the earth, just as toward a pole of the terrella: By its being placed down also, and cooling toward the earth's pole after the pristine verticity has