Till-: JIKfoKY AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE MICKOSCOPE 



I \vill not no\\ attempt to explain all the perfections of this 

 wonderful occhiale] our sense alone is a safe judge of the tiling > 

 which concern it. Kut \vhat more can I say of it than that by 

 pointing a glass to an object more than a thousand paces off, which 

 docs not even seem alive, you immediately recognise it to be 

 Socrates, son of SophroniYus, who is approaching? But time and 

 the dailv discoveries ol' new things will teach us how admirably the 

 -!a-s does it> \\oi-k. for in that alone lies all the beauty of that 

 in>iruiiicnt . 



I heard a few day> back the author himself (Galileo) narrate to 

 the .Most Kxcellent Siguor Cremoiiius various things most desirable 

 to lie known, and amongst others in what manner he perfectly dis- 

 tinguishes with hi- telex -ope the organs of motion and of the senses 

 in the smaller animals; and especially in a certain insect which has 

 each eye covered I iy a rather thick membrane, which, however, per- 

 forated \\itli seven holes, like the visor of a warrior, allows it sight. 

 Here hast thoii u new proof that the glass concentrating its rays 

 enlarges the object; but mind what I am about to tell thee, viz. in 

 the other animals of the same size and even smaller, some of which 

 have ne\ ertheless brighter eyes, these appear only double with their 

 eyebrows and the other adjacent parts.' 



After reading this document Govi judges that it is impossible to 

 refuse Galileo the credit of the invention of a compound microscope 

 in K)10, and the application of it to examine some very minute 

 animals ; and if he himself neither then nor for many years after 

 made any mention of it publicly, this cannot take away from him or 

 diminish the merit of the invention. 



It is not to be believed, however, that Galileo after these first 



experiments quite forgot the microscope, for in preparing the 



'Saggiatore' between the end of 1619 and the middle of October, 



I, he spoke thus to Lotario Sarsi Segensano (anagram of Oratio 



Grassi Salonense) : 



'I might tell Sar>i something new if anything new could be told 

 him. Let him take any substance whatever, be it stone, or wood, 

 or metal, and holding it in the sun examine it attentively and he 

 \\ill see all the colours distributed in the most minute particles, and 

 if he will make use of a telescope arranged so that one can see very 

 near objects, lie \\ill see far more distinctly what I say.' 



It will not therefore be surprising if. in !(>_! i (according to 



some letters from Rome, written by Girolamo Aleandro to the 



famous M. de Peiresc), two microscopes of Kuffler, or rather Drebbel, 



having been sent to the C.-irdinal of S. Susanna, who at first did not 



to use them, they were shown to Galileo, who was then 



tome, and lie. as soon as he saw them, explained their use, as 



writes to Peiresc on .May 24, adding. -Galileo told me 



liad invented an occhidle \\hich magnifies things as much 



SO that one sees a llv as lar-e as a hen.' ' 



f Galileo, that he' had invented a telescope which 



SO that a tly appears as bio- ;ls a hen, 



be referred to the year Kilo, and from the 

 '<" amplification by the solidify or volume the 



