"The application of the magnetic needle's direction toward the north and south, that is, the use of the mariner's compass in Europe, is probably due to the Arabs, who have to thank the Chinese for their knowledge of it. The Arabic words 'Zohron' and 'Aphron,' meaning north and south, like the numerous Arabic names of the stars in use at the present day, testify the route through which the West became acquainted with it. In European Christendom, the use of the magnetic needle is spoken of as something well known, first in a political and satirical poem, entitled 'La Bible,' written by Guyot of Provence in 1190, and in the description of Palestine, by Jacob of Vitry, bishop of Ptolemais, between the years 1204 and 1215. Also Dante (_Paradiso_, xii., 29) mentions in a simile the needle (ajo) 'which points southward.' The discovery of the mariner's compass was for a long time attributed to Flavius Gioja: he probably made some improvements in the apparatus for managing it in 1302. A much earlier employment of the compass in the European seas is seen in a naval work by Raymundus Lullus of Majorca, a wonderfully talented and scientific man. In his book, entitled 'Fenix de las Maravillas del Orbe,' published in 1286, Lullus says that the mariners of his times made use of the magnetic needle. Navarrete, in his 'Discurso Historico sobre los Progressos del Arte de Navegar en Espana,' p. 28, 1802, records a remarkable passage in the Leyes de las Partidas of the middle of the thirteenth century: 'The needle which guides the mariner in the dark night, and shows him in good and bad weather the direction which he must take, is the mediatrix (medianera) between the magnetic stone (la piedra) and the north star."--Humboldt's _Cosmos_, vol. ii., p. 291, 462. [Footnote 215: Plin., lib. xxxvii., p. 3; Plato, in _Timao_, p. 80; Martin, _Études sur le Timée_, tom. II., p. 343-346; Strabo, lib. xv., p. 703, Casaub.; Clemens Alex., _Strom._, li., p. 370. When Thales, in Aristot., _De Animá_, lib. i., p. 2, and Hippias, in _Diag. Laertio_, lib. i., p. 24, attribute a soul to the magnet and to amber, this animation only refers to a moving principle.] No. VIII.