With respect to the dip or inclination of the magnetic needle, which must be regarded as the other element of magnetic direction, there is little doubt that it was known long before the period usually assigned as the date of its discovery—namely, in 1576; for it is difficult to conceive how the variation of the needle should be observed and noted, and not its deviation from a horizontal line. In the above year a person of the name of Robert Norman, who styled himself “hydrographer,” published a book containing an account of this phenomenon. The title of this work is sufficiently curious to be quoted. It runs: “The New Attractive; containing a short Discourse of the Magnes or Loadstone, and amongst others his Virtues, of a neue discovered Secret and Subtill Propertie, concerning the Declination of the Needle touched therewith under the Plaine of the Horizon, now first found out by Robert Norman, Hydrographer.” In the third chapter we are told “by what meanes the rare and straunge declyning of the needle from the plaine of the horison was first found.” “Having made many and diuers compasses, and using always to finish and end them before I touched the needle, I found continually that after I had touched the yrons with the stone, that presently the north point thereof would bend or declyne downwards under the horison in some quantity, insomuch that I was constrained to putt some small piece of waxe in the south parts thereof, to counterpoise this declyning, and to make it equal againe. Which effecte hauing many times passed my hands without any greate regarde thereunto, as ignorant of any such properties in the stone, and not before hauing heard or read of any such matter, it chanced at length that there came to my handes an instrument to be made with a needle of sixe inches long, which needle, after I had polished, cutt off at full length, and made it to stand leuel upon the pinn, so that nothing rested but only the touching of it with the stone. When I hadde touched the same, presently the north part thereof declyned down in such sort, that being constrained to cut away some of that part to make it equall againe in the end, I cut it too short, and so spoiled the needle wherein I had taken so much paines. “Hereby being straken into some cholar, I applyed myself to seek farther into this effecte; and making certain learned and expert men, my friends, acquainted in this matter, they advised me to frame some instrument to make some exact triall how much the needle touched with the stone would declyne, or what greatest angle it would make with the plaine of the horison.” The author then proceeds to give a number of experiments which he made with his instrument, and which may be regarded as the dipping-needle in its first and rudest form. By it he found the inclination or dip to be 71° 50’.