urnish and exhibit to us wonderful subtilities. It has been
repeatedly shown above that iron not excited by a stone turns north and
south; further that it has verticity, that is, special and peculiar polar
distinctions, just as a loadstone, or iron which has been rubbed upon a
loadstone. This indeed seemed to us at first wonderful and incredible; the
metal of iron from the mine is smelted in the furnace; it runs out of the
furnace, and hardens into a great mass; this mass is divided in great
worksteads, and is drawn into iron bars, from which smiths again construct
many instruments and necessary pieces of iron-work. Thus the same mass is
variously worked up and transformed into very many similitudes. What is it,
then, which {140} preserves its verticity, and whence is it derived? So
take this first from the above[212] smithy. Let the blacksmith beat out
upon his anvil a glowing mass of iron of two or three ounces weight into an
iron spike of the length of a span of nine inches. Let the smith be
standing with his face to the north, his back to the south, so that * the
hot iron on being struck has a motion of extension to the north; and let
him so complete his work with one or two heatings of the iron (if that be
required); let him always, however, whilst he is striking the iron, direct
and beat out the same point of it toward the north, and let him lay down
that end toward the north. Let him in this way complete two, three, or more
pieces of iron, nay, a hundred or four hundred; it is demonstrable that all
those which are thus beaten out toward the north, and so placed whilst they
are cooling, turn round on their centres; and floating pieces of iron
(being transfixed, of course, through suitable corks) make a motion in the
water, the determined end being toward the north. In the same way also
pieces of iron acquire verticity from their direction whilst they are being
beaten out and hammered or drawn out, * as iron wires are accustomed to do
toward some point of the horizon between east and south or between south
and west, or in the opposite direction. Those, however, which are pointed
or drawn out rather toward the eastern or western point, conceive * hardly
any verticity or a very undecided one. That verticity is especially
acquired by being beaten out. But a somewhat inferior iron ore, in which no
magnetick powers are apparent, if put in a * fire (its position being
observed to be toward the poles of the world or of the ea