qualities with loadstone; for both, being nearer and more closely akin to the earth above all bodies known to us, have in themselves {39} a magnetick substance, & one that is more homogenic, true & cognate with the globe of the earth; less infested & spoiled by foreign blemish; less confused with the outgrowths of earth's surface, & less debased by corrupt products. And for this reason Aristotle in the fourth book of his _Meteora_ seems not unfairly to separate iron from all the rest of the metals. Gold, he says, silver, copper, tin, lead, belong to water; but iron is of the earth. Galen, in the fourth chapter of _De Facultatibus Simplicium Medicamentorum_, says that iron is an earthy & dense body. Accordingly a strong loadstone is on our showing especially of the earth: the next place is occupied by iron ore or weaker loadstone; so the loadstone is by nature and origin[102]** of iron, and it and magnetick iron are both one in kind. Iron ore yields iron in furnaces; loadstone also pours forth iron in the furnaces, but of a much more excellent sort, that which is called steel or blade-edge; and the better sort of iron ore is a weak loadstone, the best loadstone being a most excellent ore of iron, in which, as is to be shown by us, the primary properties are grand and conspicuous. Weaker loadstone or iron ore is that in which these properties are more obscure, feeble, and are scarce perceptible to the senses. * * * * * CHAP. XVII. That the globe of the earth is magnetick, & a magnet; & _how in our hands the magnet stone has all the primary_ forces of the earth, while the earth by the _same powers remains constant in a fixed direction in the universe._