• Telescope, ^c. first known in England. 245 



guagesj and not familiarised with the manners of the Indians. 

 i must therefore repeat, that Daubenton, and those who, 

 without further examination, have repeated his assertion, 

 that in the year 1776 Cachemirian sheep were sent for to 

 Reintroduced into France, were evidently mistaken. 



To Mr. Tilloch.— {Letter II.) 



XL. Curious Extracts from old English Books, with 



Remarks ivhich prove, that the Telescope, &c. ivere 



known in England much earlier than in any other 

 Country. 



1- At the conclusion of my last letter*, I intimated that I 

 had found a passage in an old book, which threatens to de- 

 prive lor<J Napier of the honour of being the first among the 

 moderns who re-invented the method by which Archi- 

 medes made the solar beams destructive to the Roman fleet j 

 and which also justifies a belief, that the revival of the 

 telescope, generally acknowledged to have been known to, if 

 not invented by, Roger Bacon, took place earlier than is 

 commonly supposed. 



2. The passage I allude to is to be found in the Panto- 

 inetria of Leonard Digges, esq. first printed at London in 

 1571 tj and again by his son Thomas Digges, esq. in 1591. 

 In the preface to this second edition, written by the latter, 

 we read what follows : 



*' 3. Archimedes also (as some suppose) with a glasse 

 framed by reuolution of a section parabolical!, fired the 

 Roman nauie in the sea, comming to the siege of Syracusa. 

 But to leave these celestiall causes, and things doone of an- 

 tiquitie long agoe, my father, by his continuall painfull prac^ 

 tises, assisted with demonstrations mathematicall, was able, 

 and sundrie times hath, by proportionall glasses, duely si-- 

 tuate in conuenient angles, not onely discouered things farre 

 off, read letters, numbered peeces of money with the verve 

 covne and superscription thereof, cast by some of his frecnds 

 of purpose, upon downes in open fields, but also seuen 



• It will not be amiss if, before the reader enter on this second letter, 

 he peruie the nrst, on the " Memoir by lord Napier," ike. inserted in 

 no. Ixix of this Magazine. 



t See kobins's Mitlicniatical Tracts, vol. ii. p. 252, coinpared with 

 •the art. Tfltsio/ie in Dr. Hutton's Dictionary, and with the title page of 

 the Panlomciiiu. 



^ 3 Hiyles 



