Earl of Carnarvon, “The Odyssey of Homer,” London, 1886, p. 201. “These marvellous ships, endued with human sense, and anticipating the will of their masters, flit unseen over the sea.”--“Homer’s Odyssey,” by W. W. Merry and James Riddell, Oxford, 1886, Vol. I. p. 353, note. “That our ships in their minds may know it when they bring thee hither to hand, Because amidst us Phæacians, our ships no helmsmen steer, Nor with us is any rudder like other ships must bear, But our keels know the minds of menfolk, and their will they understand, * * * * * And therewith exceeding swiftly over the sea-gulf do they go, In the mist and the cloud-rack hidden....” “The Odyssey of Homer,” translated by Wm. Morris, London, 1887, p. 145. The afore-named construction is not, however, alluded to by Matthew Arnold in his well-known lectures given at Oxford, nor by the Right Hon. Wm. Ewart Gladstone either in his “Juventus Mundi” or throughout his very extensive “Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age.” Sonnini tells us that as this period is about the same as that of the Chinese chronicles, it can scarcely be doubted that the knowledge of both the polarity of the needle and of the use of the compass for navigation date back 3000 years (Buffon, “Terre,” Paris, An. VIII. p. 304). This ill accords, however, with the views of others who have concluded, perhaps rightly, that the Greeks, Romans, Tuscans and Phœnicians[3] were ignorant of the directive property of the magnet, from the fact that none of the writings, more especially of Theophrastus, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius and Pliny, make explicit allusion thereto. REFERENCES.--Humboldt, “Cosmos,” 1859, Vol. V. p. 51; “Good Words,” 1874, p. 70; Brumoy, “Théâtre des Grecs,” 1820, Vol. I. p. 55; Pope’s translation of the “Iliad,” 1738, Vol. I. pp. 14, 20; Schaffner, “Telegraph Manual,” p. 19; also references under both the A.D. 121 and the A.D. 265–419 dates. =B.C. 600–580.=--Thales of Miletus, Ionia, one of the “seven wise men of Greece” (the others being Solon, Chilo, Pittacus, Bias, Cleobolus and Periander), founder of the Ionic philosophy, and from whose school came Socrates, is said to have been the first to observe the electricity developed by friction in amber. Thales, Theophrastus, Solinus, Priscian and Pliny, as well as other writers, Greek and Roman, mention the fact that when a vivifying heat is applied to amber it will attract straws, dried leaves, and other light bodies in the same way that a magnet attracts iron (“Photii Bibliotheca” Rothomagi, 1653, folio, col. 1040–1041, cod. 242).