A determined Verticity and a disponent Faculty are what arrange magneticks, not a force, attracting or pulling them together, nor merely strongish coition or unition.

Snouts raised obliquely. {132}

In the neighbourhood of the æquinoctial A there is no coition of the ends of a piece of iron with the terrella; at the poles there is the strongest. The greater the distance from the æquinoctial, the stronger is the coition with the stone itself, and with any part of it, not with its pole alone. Yet pieces of iron are not raised up on account of some peculiar attracting force or a stronger combined force, but on account of that common directing or conforming and rotating force; nor indeed is a spike in the part about B, even one that is very small and of no *weight[206], raised up to the perpendicular by the strongest terrella, but cleaves to it obliquely. Also just as a terrella attracts magnetick bodies variously with dissimilar forces, so also an iron snout placed on the stone obtains a different potency in proportion to the latitude, *just as a snout at L by its firmer connection resists a greater weight more stoutly than one at M, and at M than at N. But neither does the snout raise the spike to the perpendicular except at the poles, as is shown in the figure. A snout at L may hold and lift from the earth two ounces of iron in one piece; yet it is not strong enough to raise an iron wire of two grains weight to the perpendicular, which would happen if the verticity arose on account of a *stronger attraction, or rather coition or unition.

CHAP. VIII. Of Discords between pieces of Iron upon the same pole of a loadstone, and how they can agree and stand joined together. Suppose two iron wires or a pair of needles stuck on the pole of a terrella; though they ought to stand perpendicularly, they mutually repel one another at the upper *end, and produce the appearance of a fork; and if one end be forcibly impelled toward the other, the other declines and bends away from association with it, as in the following figure. Spikes raised obliquely due to their nearness.{133}A and B, iron spikes, adhære obliquely[207] upon the pole on account of their nearness to one another; either alone would otherwise stand erect and perpendicular. For the extremities A B, being of the same verticity, mutually abhor and fly one another. For if C be the northern pole of the terrella, A and B are also northern ends; but the ends which are joined to and held at the pole C are both *southern. But if those spikes be a little longer (as, for example, of two digits length) and be joined by force, they adhære together and unite in a friendly style, and are not separated without force. For they are magnetically welded, and there are now no longer two distinct ends, but one end and one body; no less than a wire which is doubled and set up perpendicularly. But here is seen also another subtile point, that if those spikes were shorter, not as much as the *breadth of one digit, or even the length of a barleycorn, they are in no way willing to harmonize or to stand straight up at the same time, because naturally in shorter wires the verticity is stronger in the ends which are distant from the terrella and the magnetick discord more vehement than in long ones. Wherefore they in no way admit of an intimate association and connection.

Wires suspended near a pole. Likewise if those lighter pieces of iron or iron wires be suspended, hanging, as A and B, from a very fine silk thread, not twisted *but braided, distant from the stone the length of a single barleycorn, then the opposing ends, A and B, being situated within the orbe of virtue above the pole, keep a little away from one another for the same reason; except when they are very near the pole of the stone C, the stone then attracting them more strongly toward one end.