=A.D. 1207.=--Neckam (Alexander of), 1157–1217, Abbot of St. Mary’s, alludes in his “De Utensilibus” to a needle carried on board ship, which, being placed upon a pivot and allowed to take its own position of repose, “showed mariners their course when the Polar Star is hidden.” In another work, “De Naturis Rerum” (lib. ii. cap. 89), he writes: “Mariners at sea, when, through cloudy weather in the day, which hides the sun, or through the darkness of the night, they lose the knowledge of the quarter of the world to which they are sailing, touch a needle with a magnet which will turn around until, on its own motion ceasing, its point will be directed toward the North (Chappell, “Nature,” No. 346, June 15, 1876; Thomas Wright, “Chronicles and Memoirs ... Middle Ages,” 1863). REFERENCES.--“La Grande Encyclopédie,” Vol. XXIV. p. 898; Hœfer, “Nouv. Biogr. Générale,” Vol. XXXVII. p. 570. =A.D. 1235–1315.=--Lully (Raymond) of Majorca (often confounded with Ramond Lull, who is the author of several alchemical books and of whose biography very little is known), was, by turns, a soldier, a poet, a monk, a knight, a missionary and a martyr, and is referred to by Humboldt as “the singularly ingenious and eccentric man, whose doctrines excited the enthusiasm of Giordano Bruno when a boy, and who was at once a philosophical systematizer and an analytical chemist, a skilful mariner and a successful propagator of Christianity.” During the year 1272 Lully published his “De Contemplatione,” which was followed by “Fenix de las maravillas del orbe” in 1286, and by his “Arte de Naveguar” in 1295. In these he states that the seamen of his time employed instruments of measurement, sea charts and the magnetic needle (_tenian_, _los mareantes_, _instrumento_, _carta_, _compas y aguja_), and he describes the improvements made in the astrolabes (designed for the determination of time and of geographical latitudes by meridian altitudes and capable of being employed at sea) from the period that the astrolabium of the Majorcan pilots was in use. The application of the astrolabe to navigation, Mr. Irving says (“Hist. of the Life ... of Columbus,” London, 1828, Vol. I. pp. 76–78), was “one of those timely events which seem to have some thing providential in them. It was immediately after this that Columbus proposed his voyage of discovery to the crown of Portugal.” Lully also confirms the fact that the Barcelonians employed atlases, astrolabes[11] and compasses long before Don Jaime Ferrer penetrated to the mouth of the Rio de Ouro, on the western coast of Africa, which was about fifty years after the date of the last-named work. Incidentally it may be added that Lully, posing as an alchemist, is said to have in the presence of the English King, Edward I, converted iron into gold, which latter was coined into rose-nobles (Bergman, “Hist. of Chem.”; Louis Figuier, “L’Alchimie et les Alchimistes,” Paris, 1860, p. 148).