by William Gilbert, On the Magnet — Book IV. Chap. 1… (1900)
“ We have before said that all the motions of the magnet and iron, all its turning, its inclination, and its settlement, proceed from bodies themselves magnetical and from their common mother the earth, which is the source, the propagatrix, and the origin of all these qualities and properties. ”
by William Gilbert, On the Magnet — Book IV. Chap. 1… (1900)
“ Since, however, in fact, the earth's magnetick direction, owing to some fault and slip, deviates from its right course and from the meridian, we must extract and demonstrate the obscure and hidden cause of that variance which has troubled and sore racked in vain the minds of many. Those who before us have written on the magnetick movements have made no distinction between direction and variation, but consider the motion of magnetick iron to be uniform and simple. ”
by William Gilbert, On the Magnet — Book IV. Chap. 1… (1900)
“ That any magnetick body turns itself similarly to the same regions of the earth is not, however, because of that meridian or because of the concordancy of the meridian with any magnetick pole, as the crowd of philosophizers reckon, for it is not so throughout the whole of that meridian. For on the same meridian * near Brazil something very different occurs, as we will show further on. The variation (cæteris paribus) is always less near the æquator, greater in higher latitudes, with the limitation that it be not very near the pole itself. ”
