r strength in all magnetick experiments not less than do feeble
and weak * loadstones; & an inert piece of ore, & one possessed of no
magnetick properties, & just thrown out[98] of the pit, when roasted in the
fire & prepared with due art (by the elimination of humours & foreign
excretions) awakes, and becomes in power & potency a magnet, * occasionally
a stone or iron ore is mined, which attracts forthwith without being
prepared: for native iron of the right colour attracts and governs iron
magnetically. One form then belongs to the one mineral, one species, one
self-same essence. For to me there seems to be a greater difference, &
unlikeness, between the strongest {37} loadstone, & a weak one which scarce
can attract a single chip of iron; between one that is stout, strong,
metallick, & one that is soft, friable, clayey; amidst such variety of
colour, substance, quality, & weight; than there is on the one hand between
the best ore, rich in iron, or iron that is metallick from the beginning,
and on the other the most excellent loadstone. Usually, too, there are no
marks to distinguish them, and even metallurgists cannot decide between
them, because they agree together in all respects. Moreover we see that the
best loadstone and the ore of iron are both as it were distressed by the
same maladies & diseases, both run to old age in the same way & exhibit the
same marks of it, are preserved & keep their properties by the same
remedies & safeguards; & yet again the one increases the potency of the
other, & by artfully devised adjuncts marvellously intensifies, & exalts
it. For both are impaired by the more acrid juices as by poisons, & the
aqua fortis of the Chemists inflicts on both the same wounds, and when
exposed too long to harm from the atmosphere, they both alike pine away, so
to speak, & grow old; each is preserved by being kept in the dust &
scrapings of the other; & when a fit piece of steel or iron is adjoined
above its pole, the loadstone's vigour is augmented through the firm union.
The loadstone is laid up in iron filings, not that iron is its food; as
though loadstone were alive and needed feeding, as Cardan
philosophizes[99]; nor yet that so it is delivered from the inclemency of
the weather (for which cause it as well as iron is laid up in bran by
Scaliger; mistakenly, however, for they are not preserved well in this way,
and keep for years their own fixed forms): nor yet, since they remain
perfect by the mutu