"Ils (les marins français) la nomment aussi _calamite_, qui proprement en français signifie une _grenouille verte_, parce qu'avant qu'on ait trouvé l'invention de suspendre et de balancer sur un pivot l'aiguille aimantée, nos ancêtres l'enfermaient dans une fiole de verre demi-remplie d'eau, et la faisaient flotter, par le moyen de deux petits fétus, sur l'eau comme une grenouille." Klaproth adds that he entirely agrees with the learned Jesuit, but maintains that the word _calamite_, to designate the little green frog, called to-day _le graisset_, _la raine_, or _la rainette_, is essentially Greek. For we read in Pliny (_Hist. Nat._ lib. xxxii., ch. x.): "Ea rana quam Græci _calamiten_ vocant, quoniam inter arundines, fruticesque vivat, minima omnium est et viridissima." [56] PAGE 11, LINE 20. Page 11, line 32. _Anglis_ loadstone & adamant stone. The English term _loadstone_ is clearly connected with the Anglo-Saxon verb _loedan_, to lead, and with the Icelandic _leider-stein_. There is no doubt that the spelling _lodestone_ would be etymologically more correct, since it means _stone that leads_ not _stone that carries a load_. The correct form is preserved in the word _lode-star_. The word _adamant_, from _adamas_, the mediæval word for both loadstone and diamond, also occurs in English for the loadstone, as witness Shakespeare: "You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant But yet you draw not iron; for my heart Is true as steel." _Midsummer Night's Dream_, Act II, Scene 1. [57] PAGE 11, LINE 21. Page 11, {23} line 33. _Germanis magness_, & _siegelstein_. The Stettin edition of 1628 reads _Germanis_ MAGNETSTEIN, _Belgis_ SEYLSTEEN; while that of 1633 reads _Germanis_ MAGNETSTEIN, _Belgis_ SYLSTEEN. [58] PAGE 11, LINE 26. Page 11, line 39. In this line the Greek sentence is, in every known copy of the folio of 1600, corrected in ink upon the text, [Greek: thalês] being thus altered into [Greek: Thalês], and [Greek: apomnemonuousi] into [Greek: apomnemoneuousi]. Four lines lower, brackets have been inserted around the words (lapidum specularium modo). These ink corrections must have been made at the printers', possibly by Gilbert's own hand. They have been carried out as errata in the editions of 1628 and 1633. The "facsimile" Berlin reprint of 1892 has deleted them, however. Other ink corrections on pp. 14, 22, 38, 39, 47, 130, and 200 of the folio edition of 1600 are noted in due course. [59] PAGE 11, LINE 29. Page 11, line 45. _lapis specularis_. This is the mediæval name for _mica_, but in Elizabethan times known as talc or muscovy stone. Cardan, _De Rerum Varietate_ (Basil., 1557, p. 418), lib. xiiii., cap. lxxii., mentions the use of _lapis specularis_ for windows. [60] PAGE 11, LINE 31. Page 11, line 46.: _Germanis Katzensilbar_ & _Talke_.--In the editions of 1628 and 1633 this is corrected to _Germanis_ KATZENSILBER & TALCKE. Goethe, in _Wilhelm Meister's Travels_, calls mica "cat-gold."