Sir Isaac Newton was possessed of a small magnet set in a ring, the weight of which was only three grains, but which supported, by its attractive power on iron, seven hundred grains. It has been observed that such instances are by no means common, although the smallest magnets appear to have the greatest proportionate power.[56]
Our own sailors, in the quiet weather of a voyage, will, with the aid of a marlinspike, make exceedingly neat rings out of Spanish silver or a copper coin.
Some of the Egyptian signets were of extraordinary size. Sir Gardiner Wilkinson mentions an ancient Egyptian one which contained about twenty pounds worth of gold. It consisted of a massive ring, half an inch in its largest diameter, bearing an oblong plinth, upon which the devices were engraved; on one face was the successor of Amunoph III., who lived B. C. 1400; on the other a lion, with the legend, “Lord of strength,” referring to the monarch; on the other side a scorpion, and on the remaining one a crocodile.
In the work of Count Caylus, there is a vignette of a ring of bronze, remarkable from its size and the subject upon it.[57] The collet or collar of the ring is an inch in height, and eleven lines in thickness. The figure upon it is an ox—or, as the author we have referred to calls it, a cow, recumbent and swaddled, or covered by draperies; and it wears a collar, to which hangs, according to this author, a bell. He considers that it was made when the Romans wore them of an excessive size, and while Gaul was under the dominion of the former. He does not give any guess at the intention or meaning of the subject. We believe it was, originally, Egyptian; and made in memory of the sacred Bull Apis, (found in tombs,) honored by the Egyptians as an image of the soul of Osiris and on the idea that his soul migrated from one Apis to another in succession. And as to what Caylus considers a bell, we are inclined to designate a bag. In Dr. Abbott’s collection of Egyptian Antiquities are not only mummies of these sacred bulls, but also the skulls of others, and over the head of one is suspended a large bag, found in the pits with the bulls, and supposed to be used to carry their food.
Addison, in observing upon the size of old Roman rings,[58] refers to Juvenal, as thus translated by Dryden:
“Charged with light summer rings, his fingers sweat,
Unable to support a gem of weight.”
And he goes on to say, that this “was not anciently so great an hyperbole as it is now, for I have seen old Roman rings so very thick-about and with such large stones in them, that it is no wonder a fop should reckon them a little cumbersome in the summer season of so hot a climate.”