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MAGNES.
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likelihood
the source of the mediaeval fable concerning Mahomet's coffin thus
balanced in his monument at Mecca. The Romans were acquainted with the
fact that the Loadstone communicates its virtues to iron ; they amused
themselves by putting together a series of magnetized iron rings, so
as to form a long chain by their cohesion. The metal thus magnetized
was called by the ignorant vulgar " Quick Iron," and supposed to
inflict more dangerous wounds.
The Gold Magnet of
Ben Mansur is evidently nothing more than the Magnetic Iron-Pyrites :
its property of attracting gold being a mere theoretical inference
based upon its colour. The same holds for his Silver Magnet. His Camahen or Ass-stone, "
very hard, but which breaks up into splinters," is clearly our Magnetic
Iron-Ore, called improperly Black Hematite. His epithet exactly applies
to its grey colour. Now, taking into account the general use of this
substance in ancient Persia for intagli (in his age universally regarded as talismans), the word Camahen as
denoting an engraved stone of special importance, and its introduction
in that sense into Europe by the Crusaders, furnish a plausible
explanation of the origin of the much-disputed term, Cameo. (See Cameo.)
The
earliest, also the latest, essays of the Glyptic art amongst the
ancients were made upon the Loadstone. It is the favourite material for
the Assyrian cylinders, and equally so for the Cuphic signets, which
close the history of Oriental intagli. So common a materia] was disdained by
the Greek engravers, and after their example by the Romans, until the
diffusion of Eastern doctrines in the third century brought the
substance again into favour as an amulet, and the Gnostics (at least
those sects whose tenets had rather a Persian than an Alexandrian root)
used it very largely in the manufacture of their talismans. As may be
well supposed, nothing valuable in the artistic
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