[221] I shall here lay before the reader the whole passage, taken from Histoire de l’Académie for 1717, p. 7:--“Here we have a small magnet. It is a stone found in a river of the island of Ceylon. It is of the size of a denier, flat, orbicular, about the tenth part of an inch in thickness, of a brown colour, smooth and shining, without smell and without taste, which attracts and afterwards repels small light bodies, such as ashes, filings of iron, and bits of paper. It was shown by M. Lemery. It is not common, and that which he had cost twenty-five livres (about twenty shillings sterling). When a needle has been touched with a loadstone, the south pole of the loadstone attracts the north pole of the needle, and repels its south pole: thus it attracts or repels different parts of the same body, according as they are presented to it, and it always attracts or repels the same. But the stone of Ceylon attracts, and then repels in the like manner, the same small body presented to it: in this it is very different from the loadstone. It would seem that it has a vortex....” [222] “I must not omit to mention that the rivers contain the electric stone, which is of the size of a halfpenny, flat, orbicular, shining, smooth, of a brown colour, one-tenth of an inch in thickness, without smell and without taste, and which attracts light bodies, such as ashes, filings of iron, shavings of paper, &c., and afterwards repels them. A wonderful and singular property, discovered and observed in this stone alone, when neither heated by motion nor by friction.”