me, where he became Professor of Mathematics and Oriental
Languages in the famous Roman College of the Jesuits, which was
considered at that time one of the greatest educational institutions
in the world. His interest in science, however, was not lessened by
teaching duties that would apparently have demanded all his time; and,
as we shall see, he continued to issue books on the most diverse {120}
scientific subjects, most of them illustrated by absolutely new
experimental observations and all of them attracting widespread
attention.

Father Kircher began his career as a writer on science at the early
age of twenty-seven, when he issued his first work on magnetism. The
title of this volume, "Ars Magnesia tum Theorematice tum Problematice
Proposita," shows that the subject was not treated entirely from a
speculative standpoint. Indeed, in the preface he states that he hopes
that the principal value of the book will be found in the fact that
the knowledge of magnetism is presented by a new method, with special
demonstrations, and that the conclusions are confirmed by various
practical uses and long-continued experience with magnets of various
kinds.

Although it may be a source of great surprise, Father Kircher's genius
was essentially experimental. He has been spoken of not infrequently
as a man who collected the scientific information of his time in such
a way as to display, as says the _Encyclopedia Britannica_, "a wide
and varied learning, but that he was a man singularly devoid of
judgment and critical discernment." He was in some respects the direct
opposite of the opinion thus expressed, since his learning was always
of a practical character, and there are very few subjects in this
writing which he has not himself illustrated by means of new and
ingenious experiments.

Perhaps the best possible proof of this is to be {121} found in the
fact that his second scientific work was on the construction of
sun-dials, and that one of the discoveries he himself considered most
valuable was the invention of a calculating machine, as well as of a
complicated arrangement for illustrating the positions of the stars in
the heavens. He constructed, moreover, a large burning-glass in order
to demonstrate the possibility of the story told of Archimedes, that
he had succeeded in burning the enemy's ships in the harbor at
Syracuse by means of a large lens.

But Father Kircher's surest claim to being a practical genius is to be
f