Now this piece of iron, when it had for a long time held up a brick ornament on the top of the tower of the church of St. Augustine at Rimini, had been at length bent by the force of the winds, and remained so for a period of ten years. When the monks wished to bend it back to its former shape, and had handed it over to a blacksmith, a surgeon named Maestro Giulio Caesare discovered that it was like a magnet and attracted iron." This was caused by the turning of its extremities toward the poles for so long a time. And so what has been laid down before about change of verticity should be borne in mind; how in fact the poles of iron spikes are altered, when a loadstone is placed against them only with its pole and points toward them, even at a rather long distance. Clearly it is in the same way that that large magnet also (to wit, the earth itself) affects a piece of iron and changes its verticity. For, although the iron may not touch the pole of the earth, nor any magnetick part of the earth, yet verticity is acquired and changed; not because the poles of the earth and the point itself which is 39° distant {142} from our city of London, changes the verticity at a distance of so many miles; but because the whole magnetick earth, that which projects to a considerable height, and to which the iron is near, and that which is situated between us and the pole, and the vigour existing within the orbe of its magnetick virtue (the nature of the whole conspiring thereto), produces the verticity. For the magnetick effluence of the earth rules everywhere within the orbe of its virtue, and transforms bodies; but those things which are more similar to it, and specially connected with it by nature, it rules and controls; as loadstone and iron. Wherefore in very many matters of business and actions it is clearly not superstitious and idle to observe the positions and conditions of lands, the points of the horizon and the places of the stars. For as when a babe is brought forth into the light from its mother's womb, and acquires respiration and certain animal activities, then the planets and celestial bodies[214], according to their position in the universe, and according to that configuration which they have with regard to the horizon and the earth, instil peculiar and individual qualities into the newly born; so that piece of iron, whilst it is being formed and lengthened out, is affected by the common cause (to wit, the earth); whilst it is returning also from its heated condition to its former temperature, it is imbued with a special verticity in accord with its position. Rather long pieces of iron sometimes have the same verticity * at each end; wherefore they have motions which are less certain and well ordered on account of their length and of the aforesaid processes, exactly as when an iron wire four feet long is rubbed at each end upon the same pole of a loadstone. * * * * * CHAP. XIII.