crept or fallen into it when it first flowed forth in a liquid state[113].
The ancients and also more recent writers recall (experience proving the
same thing), that amber attracts straws and chaff[114]. The same is also
done by jet[115], which is dug out of the earth in Britain, in Germany, and
in very many lands, and is a rather hard concretion from black bitumen, and
as it were a transformation into stone. There are many modern authors[116]
who have written and copied from others about amber and jet[117] attracting
chaff, and about other {48} substances generally unknown; with whose
labours the shops of booksellers are crammed. Our own age has produced many
books about hidden, abstruse, and occult causes and wonders, in all of
which amber and jet are set forth as enticing chaff; but they treat the
subject in words alone, without finding any reasons or proofs from
experiments, their very statements obscuring the thing in a greater fog,
forsooth in a cryptic, marvellous, abstruse, secret, occult, way. Wherefore
also such philosophy produces no fruit, because very many philosophers,
making no investigation themselves, unsupported by any practical
experience, idle and inert, make no progress by their records, and do not
see what light they can bring to their theories; but their philosophy rests
simply on the use of certain Greek words, or uncommon ones; after the
manner of our gossips and barbers nowadays, who make show of certain Latin
words to an ignorant populace as the insignia of their craft, and snatch at
the popular favour. For it is not only amber and * jet (as they suppose)
which entice small bodies[118]; but Diamond, Sapphire, Carbuncle, Iris
gem[119], Opal, Amethyst, Vincentina, and Bristolla (an English gem or
spar)[120], Beryl, and Crystal[121] do the same. Similar powers of
attraction are seen also to be possessed by glass (especially when clear
and lucid), as also by false gems made of glass or Crystal, by glass of
antimony, and by many kinds of spars from the mines, and by Belemnites.
Sulphur also attracts, and mastick, and hard sealing-wax[122] compounded of
lac tinctured of various colours. Rather hard resin entices, as does
orpiment[123], but less strongly; with difficulty also and indistinctly
under a suitable dry sky[124], Rock salt, muscovy stone, and rock alum.
This one may see when the air is sharp and clear and rare in mid-winter,
when the emanations from the earth hinder electricks less, and the
el