Chapter III

of his ‘Memoirs and Travels’ mentions the stratagem which he tried at sea to falsify the compass by the use of iron and garlic. I now find that in the 17th century the belief actually prevailed in England that an onion would destroy the power of the magnet. Thus Sir John Pettus of Suffolk, Kt., after describing his visit as a youth to the lead mines of Derbyshire in company with Sir Thomas Bendish says that having magnetized the blade of his knife and hearing that contact with an onion would utterly destroy that power, he preferred to believe rather than risk losing his magnet. The passage occurs in a rambling note on ‘Mineralls’ in the second part of his ‘Fleta Minor.’” It might be considered in connection with such stories that the onion as well as the lodestone is of the zodiacal Scorpio. To dream of the lodestone warns of subtle dealings and contentions. It is under the celestial Scorpion.

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