Albertus Magnus (1193-1280) in his _De Mineralibus_, Lib. II., Tract 3, Cap. 6, writes: “It is the end of the lodestone which makes the iron that touched it turn to the north (_ad zoron_) and which is of use to mariners; but the other end of the needle turns toward the south (_ad aphron_).” This illustrious Bavarian schoolman joined the Dominican Order in his youth, lectured to great audiences in Cologne, became bishop of Ratisbonne in 1260, and died in 1280. Thomas Aquinas the greatest of schoolmen, was among his pupils. In the Spanish code of laws, begun in 1256, during the reign of Alfonso el Sabio, and known as _Las Siete Partidas_, we read: “Just as mariners are guided during the night by the needle, which replaces for them the shores and pole star alike, by showing them the course to pursue both in fair weather and foul, so those who are called upon to advise the King must always be guided by a spirit of justice.” Brunetto Latini, in his _Trésor des Sciences_, 1260, writes: “The sailors navigate the seas guided by the two stars called the tramontanes, and each of the two parts of the lodestone directs the end of the needle to the star to which that part itself turns.” Brunetto Latini (1230-1294) was a man of great eminence in the thirteenth century; Dante was among his pupils at Florence. For political reasons, he removed to Paris, where he wrote his _Trésor_ and also his _Tesoretto_. He visited Roger Bacon at Oxford about 1260. In his treatise _De Contemplatione_, begun in 1272, Raymond Lully writes: “As the needle, after having touched the lodestone, turns to the north, so the mariner’s needle (_acus nautica_) directs them over the sea.” Lully was born at Palma in the Island of Majorca in 1236; he joined the Third Order of St. Francis, dying in 1315. Ristoro d’Arezzo, in his _Libro della Composizione del Mundo_, written in 1282, has the following: “Besides this, there is the needle which guides the mariner, and which is itself directed by the star called the tramontane.”[6] The following metrical translation of a poem by Guido Guinicelli, an Italian priest, 1276, is from the pen of Dr. Park Benjamin, of New York: In what strange regions ’neath the polar star May the great hills of massy lodestone rise, Virtue imparting to the ambient air To draw the stubborn iron; while afar From that same stone, the hidden virtue flies To turn the quivering needle to the Bear In splendor blazing in the Northern skies. The above extracts show that the directive property of the magnetic needle was well known in England, France, Germany, Spain and Italy in the thirteenth century. In the passage from Neckam, the _acum jaculo superpositam_ has been construed by some to mean a form of pivoted needle, while in the letter of Peregrinus, 1269, the double pivoted form is clearly described. Footnotes