In every respect, save the polarity of the needle, the Chinese compass differs. The south, taking the negative for the positive polarity, is made the leading point: it is not marked by any mouassola or figure, but painted _red_. There is no cross, and consequently no _centre_. The needle bisects merely the instrument. There are no _cardinal_ points.[148] The first subdivision is into eight, the second into twenty-four; avoiding _sixteen_--that essential number of augury and of the Hindoos,[149] &c. This is the nautical part of the instrument, and occupies four of the concentric circles that are traced on the broad plate which surrounds the instrument; then succeed ten other circles, through which the radii of the first four are not continued, and where figure a variety of words and divisions, which no one has explained, and which the highest authorities confess their inability to comprehend. The astronomic degrees on the outer circle are not equal to one another, and amount to about three hundred and eighty. Although the needle revolves, it is not on a pivot, but on a point which, like the letter T, descends into the wood of the box, and there turns in a _socket_. No card is affixed on it: it traverses as an index, pointing to the scale of the circle traced on the box. That the Chinese knew the variation of the needle, and had accurately fixed that of Canton, expressing it by the converse signs, has been established by M. Klaproth, and might have led him to doubt the theory he has so boldly asserted, of ours being derived from theirs. Thus, the Chinese compass differs from ours _toto cœlo_, there not being a single point in which, even by accident, we have hit upon the same method. A junk and a Phœnician galley, or an English collier, are not more dissimilar: both sail the seas, and both direct the ship--there all resemblance begins and ends. The Chinese instrument had been used on land for many centuries before the Christian era. It had been adopted in navigation at least in the third century of our era. It existed, therefore, in the form in which we now see it, long antecedent to its use in the West. It is as serviceable as ours for every purpose of navigation. Why should we have reversed the whole order? How could we have done so with that uniformity which prevails in all the countries of the West? But there is still, if possible, a stronger argument. The needle, when first used by the Arabs, received only a _temporary polarity_; the Chinese give to theirs a _permanent polarity_. The former process was, therefore, a step in the discovery: had it been borrowed they would have at once used the perfect method. The process is thus described in 1242 by _Boulak Kibdjaki_.