of the earliest Trigonometrical Canon. 521 



ately come, and drops the matter, as if declining to decide the 

 point. Kastner quotes the passage from Otho which 1 have 

 translated above, and makes a separate head of it, in his abs- 

 tract of the preface of the Opus Palatinum ; he does not give 

 his usual short comment, and evidently leaves it to the reader 

 without knowing what to make of it. 



That Weidler should have been utterly ignorant of this 

 work is rather a striking proof of the complete oblivion into 

 which it had fallen. For Rheticus (with Reinhold) professed 

 mathematics in the University of Wittemberg, after having 

 taken degrees there ; and Weidler was not only of this uni- 

 versity, but wrote his history of astronomy, and printed it, at 

 Wittemberg. Consequently he had access to the matricula^ 

 or register-book, and to all other records ; so that he is able 

 to give several minute particulars of the literary life of Rheti- 

 cus, which another writer could hardly have obtained. But 

 not even at Wittemberg did any tradition exist of the work 

 on which this paper is written. It was printed, certainly, at 

 Leipsic, and on the residence of Rheticus in this latter uni- 

 versity, Weidler can say nothing more than that Rheticus is 

 reported to have taught there. It is worth noting that, next 

 to Wittemberg, Leipsic was the university most obnoxious to 

 the adherents of the old church. 



Lalande actually possessed a copy of a reprint of this same 

 canon, published (he says) in 1580, and has given the title- 

 page with perfect correctness, in his short description of the 

 Opus Palatinum^ contained in the Bibliographie Astro7iomique. 

 But, with a negligence which is unusual in his bibliographical 

 accounts, he represents it as a canon for the first forty-five mi- 

 nutes only, to every ten seconds ; a kind of extract from the 

 forthcoming Opus Palatinum. Had he looked more closely, 

 he would have seen that his minutes are degrees arid his secojids 

 minutes ; and he would have seen the remaining forty-five de- 

 grees rising in the reverse direction on the opposite side of the 

 page. Perhaps Lalande could not imagine the possibility of 

 the calculator of the immense Opus Palatinum publishing a 

 table to every ten minutes only. 



Murhard has this reprint, Basle, 1580, in his list, but not 

 the original work, and it is also in the catalogue of De Thou's 

 library. The title is to be found in Teissiei''s Eloges des 

 Hommes Sava?is, from whence it is copied into a work in which 

 we should hardly have looked for mathematical treatises which 

 are unknown to mathematicians, Gorton's Biographical Dic- 

 tionary. The library of the British Museum, which is un- 

 usually rich in the mathematical works of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, has both the original work and the reprint. But I do 



