That makes rings hang in chains by touch.
Sometimes five or six links will be
Fast joyn’d together and agree.
All this vertue from the Stone ariseth,
Such force it hath ...”
Chap. XXVII alludes to the Statue hung by Dinocrates: “... but that is false, that Mahomet’s chest hangs by the roof of the Temple. Petrus Pellegrinus saith, he shewed in another work how that might be done: but that work is not to be found.... But I say it may be done—because I have now done it—to hold it fast by an invisible band, to hang in the air: onely so, that it be bound with a small thread beneath, that it may not rise higher: and then striving to catch hold of the stone above, it will hang in the air, and tremble and wag itself.”
In Chap. XXVIII he says that “Whilst the loadstone is moved under a table of wood, stone or any metal, except iron, the needle in the mariner’s compass will move above, as if there is no body between them. St. Augustine (‘Liber de Civitate Dei’) knew this experiment (likewise alluded to by Camillus Leonardus in his ‘Speculum Lapidum,’ published 1502). But that is much more wonderful that I have heerd: that if one hold a loadstone under a piece of silver, and put a piece of iron above the silver, as he moves his hand underneath that holds the stone, so will the iron move above; and the silver being in the middle, and suffering nothing, running so swiftly up and down, that the stone was pulled from the hand of the man, and took hold of the iron.”
Chap. XXX is headed: “A loadstone on a plate of iron, will not stir iron,” and he again quotes Lucretius:
“Pieces of iron I have seen
When onely brass was put between