n his book _De Rerum Varietate_) there fell
from the sky 1200 stones, one weighing 120 pounds, another 30 or 40 pounds,
of a rusty iron colour and remarkably hard. These occurrences being rare
are regarded as portents, like the showers of earth and stones mentioned in
Roman history. But that it ever rained other metals is not {27} recorded;
for it has never been known to rain from the sky gold, silver, lead, tin,
or spelter[82]. Copper, however, has been at some time noticed to fall from
the sky, and this is not very unlike iron; and in fact cloud-born iron of
this sort, or copper, are seen to be imperfectly metallick, incapable of
being cast in any way, or wrought with facility. For the earth hath of her
store plenty of iron in her highlands, and the globe contains the ferric
and magnetick element in rich abundance. The exhalations forcibly derived
from such material may well become concreted in the upper air by the help
of more powerful causes, and hence some monstrous progeny of iron be
begotten.

* * * * *

CHAP. IX.

Iron ore attracts iron ore.

From various substances iron (like all the rest of the * metals) is
extracted: such substances being stones, earth, and similar concretions
which miners call veins because it is in veins[83], as it were, that they
are generated. We have spoken above of the variety of these veins. If a
properly coloured ore of iron and a rich one (as miners call it) is placed,
as soon as mined, upon water in a bowl or any small vessel (as we have
shown before in the case of a loadstone), it is attracted by a similar
piece of ore brought near by hand, yet not so powerfully and quickly as one
loadstone is drawn by another loadstone, but slowly and feebly. Ores of
iron that are stony, cindery, dusky, red, and several more of other
colours, do not attract one another mutually, nor are they attracted by the
loadstone itself, even by a strong one, no more than wood, or lead, silver,
or gold. Take those ores and burn, or rather roast them, in a moderate
fire, so that they are not suddenly split up, or fly asunder, keeping up
the fire ten or twelve hours, and gently increasing it, then let them grow
cold, skill being shown in the direction in which they are placed: These
ores thus prepared a loadstone will now draw, and they now show a mutual
sympathy, and when skilfully arranged run together by their own forces.

* * * * *

{28