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MAGNES.
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The Loadstone,
or Magnetic Iron-ore, is a compound of Protoxide and Peroxide of Iron.
It is black, heavy, and compact; sufficiently hard to take a good
polish, which gives the surface a metallic lustre, like iron polished
with black lead. Pliny (xxxvi. 25), on the authority of Nicander,
states that the Magnet took its name from the herdsman who first
discovered it in Mount Ida, by its attracting the nails in his soles,
and the ferule of his staff, as he walked over the bed. Pliny notices
the great abundance of it in Spain ; in fact, the richest iron-mines at
present worked, those of Elba and Sweden, consist entirely of Magnetic
ore.
Sotacus
divided it into five species : the Ethiopian, the best, and sold for
its weight in silver ; the second, found in Magnesia of Macedonia ; the
third, in Hyettus of Boeotia, redder in appearance than the second ;
the fourth, in Alexandria Troas ; the fifth, in Magnesia of Asia, which
was the worst of all, being white and like a pumice-stone.* That of the
Troas was black and but feebly attractive, and was therefore considered
the female of the species. It had been observed that the blacker the
colour (i. e. possessing
*
Which two qualities are a sufficient proof that this mineral was no
Magnet at all, but merely had been confounded with it by impractical
describers in virtue of the similarity of the name. It was a stone of
which Theophrastus (quoted below) has taken notice.
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