324 COSMOS. 



The S2:)ots ui)on the sun were first observed lliiougli tel»> 

 scopes by Johanii Fabricius of East Friesland, and by Galilee 

 (at Padua or Venice, as is asserted). In the publication of 

 the discovery, m Jwne, 1611, Fabricius incontestably preceded 

 Galileo by one year, since his first letter to the burgomaster, 

 Marcus Welser, is dated the 4th of May, 1612. The earliest 

 observations of Fabricius were made, according to Arago'a 

 careful researches, in March, 1611,* and, according to Sir 

 David Brewster, even as early as toward the close of the yea? 

 1610 : while Christoplier Scheiner did not carry his own ob- 

 servations back to an earlier period than April, 1611, and it 

 is probable that he did not seriously occupy himself with the 

 solar spots until October of the same year. Concerning Gal- 

 ileo we possess only very obscure and discrepant data on this 

 subject. It is probable that he recognized the solar spots in 

 April, 1611, for he showed them publicly at Rome in Cardi- 

 nal Bandini's garden on the Quirinal, in the months of April 

 and May of that year. Hariot, to whom Baron Zach ascribes 

 the discovery of the sun's spots (16th of January, 1610), cer- 

 tainly saw three of them on the 8th of December, 1610, and 

 noted them down in a register of observations ; but he was 

 ignorant that they were solar spots ; thus, too, Flamstead, on 

 the 23d of December, 1690, and Tobias Mayer, on the 25th 

 of September, 1756, did not recognize Uranus as a planet 

 when it passed across the field of their telescope. Hariot first 

 observed the solar spots on the 1st of December, 1611, five 

 months, therefore, after Fabricius had published his discovery. 

 Galileo had made the observation that the solar spots, " many 

 of which are larger than the Mediterranean, or even than 

 Africa and Asia," form a definite zone on the sun's disk. He 

 occasionally noticed the s^pae spots return, and he was con- 

 vinced that they belonged to the sun itself. Their difierences 

 of dimension in the center of the sun, and when they disap- 

 peared on the sun's edge, especially attracted his attention, 



* See Arago, in the Annnaire for 1842, p. 460-476 {Dicouvertes des 

 inches Solaires et de la Rotation du Soleil). Brewster {Martyrs of 

 Science, p. 36 and 39) places the first observation of Galileo in October 

 or November, 1610. Compare Nelli, Vita, vol. i., p. 324-384 ; Galilei, 

 Opere, t. i., p. lix. ; t. ii., p. 85-200 ; t. iv., p. 53. On Harriot's observ- 

 ations, see Rigaud,p. 32 and 38. The Jesuit Scheiner, who was sum- 

 moned from Gratz to Rome, has been accused of striving to revenge 

 himself on Galileo, on account of the literary contest regarding the dis- 

 covery of the solar spots, by getting it whispered to Pope Urban VIII. ^ 

 through another Jesuit, Grassi, that he (the pope), in the Dialoghidellt 

 Scienze Nuovts, was represented as the foolish and ignorant Simplicic 

 (Nelli, vol. ii.. p. 515) 



