On the lodestone and magnetic bodies and on the great magnet the earth : a new physiology demonstrated with many arguments and experiments / William Gilbert of Colchester, physician of London ... a translation by P. Fleury Mottelay.

  • Gilbert, William, 1544-1603.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the lodestone and magnetic bodies and on the great magnet the earth : a new physiology demonstrated with many arguments and experiments / William Gilbert of Colchester, physician of London ... a translation by P. Fleury Mottelay. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    rather long pieces of wire or little rods are also made to rotate irregularly, just as pieces of iron wire and iron balls and other spherical loadstones are made to rotate irregularly by an ob- long loadstone not rounded into a ball. Yet magnetic bodies or pieces of iron on the surface of a terrella should not have a long but a very short axis, so that they may dip true and nat- urally ; for a long versorium situated near a terrella does not easily stand in a right sphere on the horizon, and wavers and suddenly dips to one side or the other, especially its magnet- ized end, or, if both ends are magnetized, then the end mag- netized last. CHAPTER V. THAT DIP IS NOT CAUSED BY THE ATTRACTION OF A LOAD- STONE, BUT BY ITS POWER OF GIVING DIRECTION AND ROTATION. Throughout nature we have to recognize that wondrous work of the Maker whereby the principal bodies are restricted within particular localities and, as it were, hedged round with fences, nature so ordering. Hence it is that heavenly bodies do not get confused in their motions and in their progressions