INTRODUCTION XXXV

"TThe conservation of substances and bodies is maintained by
the close interconnection of their parts, the elements, which,
by their »:s conservatriæz always strive to reach a position where
they can best avoid a vacuum?''.

He discusses, at length, the magnetic needle of the compass
and whether, if there are, at the pole, as some traders assert,
mountains of iron and magnet whose emissions (spectes) can af—
fect the needle'; and, he describes his own experiments with the
magnetic needle, and with no less patience, many problems that
arise from what we should dismiss as popular superstitions; for
he regards a superstition as **unfinished business', though there
are some desperate cases that he leaves **to Nature and to God'.
Why cannot cabbage and rue be grown together? How can
the Echeneis piscis stop, or at least hinder, a ship? Why can
adamant be softened by goat's blood? ' Why does the seven—
months' infant live, while the eight—months' infant does not,
except, indeed, in Egypt? He was puzzling over such matters
when, in 1534, he wrote to Rannusio: '^There is an infinite
number of such questions, and one is the nature of contagion'.

The Spirits

For what sounds to us the most foolish of these problems, he
could give an explanation in agreement with the medical doc—

: Rannusio having reproached him with vagueness on this point,
he devotes a final chapter, or rather appendix, since it is not num—
bered, to answering his friend's criticisms.  He says that he has seen
charts with æmor(es magnetis marked ^near (or beneath?) the pole
and so, traders, also, assert'^; that there are certainly magnetic
mountains on the isle of Elba, but navigators say they have no
effect on the needle of the compass, so the amount of the mineral
must be small; he prefers to leave the question swb ambiguwo. He
is credited by C. and D. Singer with having, for the first time, used
the word poZz, the poles, of the extremities of the axis of the earth,
in Sympathy, Ch.7. It is not like him to use a word in a new sense,
without a definition such as his careful explanation of fomes
in Confagion. Pole, in the modern sense, was used by English
writers in 1551; in several references to mountains of magnet, he
always says they are sub polJo', "^near (or beneath ? ) the pole!!,
and his second diagram on p. 51 (ed. of 1554) shows clearly that he
here means the pole of the Earth. / But I should like to have definite
evidence that this usage begins with him.

Burton, writing on the 'loadstone", and, in genera!, on the
^Joves and hates" of inanimate things, says: "*Read more of this
in Fracastorius, De Sympa£hia.