Page:On the Magnet - Gilbert (1900 translation of 1600 work).djvu/70

 stances generally unknown; with whose labours the shops of booksellers are crammed. Our own age has produced many books about hidden, abstruse, and occult causes and wonders, in all of which amber and jet are set forth as enticing chaff; but they treat the subject in words alone, without finding any reasons or proofs from experiments, their very statements obscuring the thing in a greater fog, forsooth in a cryptic, marvellous, abstruse, secret, occult, way. Wherefore also such philosophy produces no fruit, because very many philosophers, making no investigation themselves, unsupported by any practical experience, idle and inert, make no progress by their records, and do not see what light they can bring to their theories; but their philosophy rests simply on the use of certain Greek words, or uncommon ones; after the manner of our gossips and barbers nowadays, who make show of certain Latin words to an ignorant populace as the insignia of their craft, and snatch at the popular favour. For it is not only amber and jet (as they suppose) which entice small bodies; but Diamond, Sapphire, Carbuncle, Iris gem, Opal, Amethyst, Vincentina, and Bristolla (an English gem or spar), Beryl, and Crystal do the same. Similar powers of attraction are seen also to be possessed by glass (especially when clear and lucid), as also by false gems made of glass or Crystal, by glass of antimony, and by many kinds of spars from the mines, and by Belemnites. Sulphur also attracts, and mastick, and hard sealing-wax compounded of lac tinctured of various colours. Rather hard resin entices, as does orpiment, but less strongly; with difficulty also and indistinctly under a suitable dry sky, Rock salt, muscovy stone, and rock alum. This one may see when the air is sharp and clear and rare in mid-winter, when the emanations from the earth hinder electricks less, and the electrick bodies become more firmly indurated; about which hereafter. These substances draw everything, not straws and chaff only, but all metals, woods, leaves, stones, earths, even water and oil, and everything which is subject to our senses, or is solid; although some write that amber does not attract anything but chaff and certain twigs; (wherefore falsely declares the question of amber to be inexplicable, because it attracts dry chaff only, and not basil leaves, but these are the utterly false and disgraceful tales of the writers. But in order that you may be able clearly to test how such attraction occurs, and what those materials are which thus entice other bodies (for even if bodies incline towards some of these, yet on account of weakness they seem not to be raised by them, but are more easily turned), make yourself a versorium of any metal you like, three or four digits in length, resting rather lightly on its point of support after the manner of a magnetick needle, to one end of which bring up a piece of amber or a smooth