and perfect, though deformed by the fusion. And
when that material indeed is provoked by a loadstone, it conceives the
magnetick virtues, and within their orbe is raised in strength more than
the weaker loadstone, which with us is often not free from some admixture
of impurities.

* * * * *

CHAP. XXVII.

*

The Centre of the Magnetick Virtues in the earth
is the centre of the earth; and in a terrella
_is the centre of the stone_.

Rays of magnetick virtue spread out in every direction in an orbe; the
centre of this orbe is not at the pole (as Baptista Porta reckons, Chap.
22), but in the centre of the stone and of the terrella. So also the centre
of the earth is the centre of the magnetick motions of the earth; though
magneticks are not borne directly toward the centre by magnetical motion,
except when they are attracted by the true pole. For since the formal {96}
power of the stone and of the earth does not promote anything but the unity
and conformity of disjoined bodies, it comes about that everywhere at an
equal distance from the centre or from the circumference, just as it seems
to attract perpendicularly at one place, so at another it is able even to
dispose and to turn, provided the stone is not uneven in virtue. For if at
the distance C from the pole D the stone is able to allure a versorium, *
at an equally long interval above the aequator at A that stone can also
direct and turn the versorium. So the very centre and middle of the
terrella is the centre of its virtue, and from this to the circumference of
the orbe (at equal intervals on every side) its magnetick virtues are
emitted.

[Illustration]

* * * * *

CHAP. XXVIII.

A Loadstone attracts magneticks not only to a
fixed point or pole, but to every part of a
_terrella save the aequinoctial zone_.

Coitions are always more powerful when poles are near poles, since in them
by the concordancy of the whole there exists a stronger force; wherefore
the one embraces the other more strongly. Places declining from the poles
have attractive forces, but a little weaker and languid in the ratio of
their distance; so that at length on the aequinoctial circle they are
utterly enervated and evanescent. Neither do even the poles attract as
mathematical points; nor do magneticks come into conjunction by their own
poles, only on the poles of a loadstone. But coition {97} is made on every
part