ires its verticity from the earth, and iron is affected by the
verticity of the globe even as iron is by a loadstone: Magneticks are
conformable to and are regulated by the earth, and are subject to the earth
in all their motions. All its movements harmonize with, and strictly wait
upon, the geometry and form of the earth, as we shall afterwards prove by
most conclusive experiments and diagrams; and the chief part of the visible
earth is also magnetical, and has magnetick motions, although it be
disfigured by corruptions and mutations without end. Why then do we not
recognize this the chief homogenic substance of the earth, likest of
substances to its inner nature and closest allied to its very marrow? For
none of the other mixed earths suitable for agriculture, no other
metalliferous veins, nor stones, nor sand, nor other fragments of the earth
which have come to our view possess such constant and peculiar powers. And
yet we do not assume that the whole interior of this globe of ours is
composed of stones or iron (although Franciscus Maurolycus, that learned
man, deems the whole of the earth's interior to consist of solid stone).
For not every loadstone that we have is a stone, it being sometimes like a
clod, or like clay and iron either firmly compacted together out of various
materials, or of a softer composition, or by heat reduced to the metallick
state; and the magnetick substance by reason of its location and of its
surroundings, and of the metallick matrix itself, is distinguished, at the
surface of the terrene mass, by many qualities and adventitious natures,
just as in clay it is marked by certain stones and iron lodes. But we
maintain that the true earth is a solid substance, homogeneous with the
globe, closely coherent, endowed with a primordial and (as in the other
globes of the universe) with a prepotent form; in which position it
persists with a fixed verticity, and revolves with a necessary motion and
an inherent tendency to turn, and it is this constitution, when true and
native, and not injured or disfigured by outward defects, that the
loadstone possesses above all bodies apparent to us, as if it were a more
truly homogenic part taken from the earth. Accordingly native iron which
_sui generis_ (as metallurgists term it), is formed when homogenic parts of
the earth grow together into a metallick lode; Loadstone being formed when
they are changed into metallick stone, or a lode of the finest iron, or
steel