The variation in any one place is constant.

Inclination of a versorium toward a second magnet.

Unless there should be a great dissolution of a continent and a subsidence of the land such as there was of the region Atlantis of which Plato and the ancients tell, the variation will continue perpetually immutable; the arc of the variation remains the same in the same place or region, whether it be at sea or on land, as in times past a magnetick body has declined toward the East or the West.

The constancy of the variation and the pointing of the versorium to a definite point on the horizon in individual regions is demonstrated by a small versorium placed over a terrella the surface of which is uneven: for it always deviates from the meridian by an equal arc.

It is also shown by the inclination of a versorium toward a second magnet; although in reality it is by the turning power of the whole, whether in the earth or in a terrella. Place upon a plane a versorium whose cusp is directed toward the north A: place beside it a loadstone, B, at such a distance that the versorium may turn aside toward B to the point C, and not beyond. Then move the needle of the versorium as often as you will (the box and the loadstone not being moved), and it will certainly always return to the point C.

In the same manner, if you {160}placed the stone so that it may be truly directed toward E, the cusp always reverts to E, and not to any other point of the compass. Accordingly, from the position of the land and from the distinctive nature of the highest parts of the earth (certain terrene and more magnetick eminences of the regions prevailing), the variation indeed becomes definite in one and the same place, but diverse and unæqual from a change of place, since the true and polar direction originating in the whole terrestrial globe is diverted somewhat toward certain stronger eminences on the broken surface.

Chapter 4. The arc of variation is not changed equally in proportion to the distance of places.

In the open sea, when a vessel is borne by a favourable wind along the same parallel, if the variation be changed by one degree in the course of one hundred miles, the next hundred miles do not therefore lessen it by another degree; for the magnetick [needle] varies erratically as respects position, form, and vigour of the land, and also because of the distance.

As, for example, when a course from the Scilly Isles to Newfoundland has proceeded so far that the compass is directed to the true pole, then, as the vessel proceeds, in the first part of the course the variation increases toward the north-west[222], but rather indistinctly and with small difference: thence, after an equal distance, the arc is increased in a greater proportion until the vessel is not far from the continent: for then it varies most of all. But before it touches actual land or enters port, then at a certain distance the arc is again slightly diminished.

But if the vessel in its course should decline greatly from that parallel either toward the south or the north, the magnetick [needle] will vary more or less, according to the position of the land and the latitude *of the region. For (cæteris paribus) the greater the latitude the greater the variation.

{161}

Chapter 5. An island in Ocean does not change the variation[223], as neither do mines of loadstone.

Islands, although they be more magnetick than the sea, yet do not change the magnetick directions or variations. For since direction is a motion derived from the power of the whole earth, not from the attraction of any hill but from the disposing and turning power of the whole; so variation (which is a perturbation of the direction) is an aberration of the real turning power arising from the great inequalities of the earth, in consequence of which it, of itself, slightly diverts movable magneticks toward those which are the largest and the more powerful.

The cause now shown may suffice to explain that which some so wonder at about the Island of Elba (and although this is productive of loadstone, yet the versorium (or mariners’ compass) makes no special inclination toward it whenever vessels approach it in the Tyrrhenian sea); and the following causes are also to be considered, viz.: that the virtue of smaller magnetick bodies extends scarcely or not at all of itself beyond their own mines: for variation does not occur because of attraction, as they would have it who have imagined magnetick poles.

Besides, magnetick mines are only agnate to the true earth, not innate: hence the whole globe does not regard them, and magneticks are not borne to them, as is demonstrated by the diagram of eminences.