[5] PAGE 2, LINE 8. Page 2, line 5. _si allio magnes illitus fuerit, aut si adamas fuerit_. An excellent version of this myth is to be found in Julius Solinus, _Polyhistor, De Memorabilibus_, chap. lxiv., of which the English version of 1587, by A. Golding, runs thus: "The Diamonde will not suffer the Lodestone to drawe yron unto him: or if y^e Lodestone haue alreadie drawne a peece of yron to it, the Diamond snatcheth and pulleth away as hys bootye whatsoever the Lodestone hath taken hold of." Saint Augustine repeats the diamond myth in his _De Civitate Dei_, lib. xxi. Baptista Porta says (p. 211 of the English version of 1658): "It is a common Opinion amongst Sea-men, That Onyons and Garlick are at odds with the Loadstone: and Steers-men, and such as tend the Mariners Card are forbid to eat Onyons or Garlick, lest they make the Index of the Poles drunk. But when I tried all these things, found them to be false: for not onely breathing and belching upon the Loadstone after eating of Garlick, did not stop its vertues: but when it was all anoynted over with the juice of Garlick, it did perform its office as well as if it had never been touched with it: and I could observe almost not the least difference, lest I should make void the endeavours of the Ancients. {5} And again, When I enquired of Marines, whether it were so, that they were forbid to eat Onyons and Garlick for that reason; they said, they were old Wives fables, and things ridiculous; and that Sea-men would sooner lose their lives, then abstain from eating Onyons and Garlick." The fables respecting the antipathy of garlick and of the diamond to the operation of the magnet, although already discredited by Ruellius and by Porta, died hard. In spite of the exposure and denunciations of Gilbert--compare p. 32--these tales were oft repeated during the succeeding century. In the appendix to Sir Hugh Plat's _Jewel House of Art and Nature_, in the edition of 1653, by D. B. Gent, it is stated there (p. 218): "The Loadstone which ... hath an admirable vertue not onely to draw Iron to it self, but also to make any Iron upon which it is rubbed to draw iron also, it is written notwithstanding, that being rubbed with the juyce of Garlick, it loseth that vertue, and cannot then draw iron, as likewise if a Diamond be layed close unto it."