LETTERS ON SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS. 47 



trifles in respect, though in themselves they deserve to be of 

 good account. Thus wishing you all happiness and success 

 to your liking, I take my leave. 



Your very assured loving friend, 



HENRY BRIGGS. 

 From Merton Coll: this 11 July, 1623. 



THOMAS LYDYAT TO HENRY BRIGGS. 



[MS. Bodl. 313.] 



Mr. Briggs, There was delivered to me yesterday, in the 

 afternoon, at Banbury, by one of my neighbour ministers, a 

 letter from you bearing date the 11 of July, i. e. Friday was 

 sennenet, which he said was delivered to him yesterday was 

 sennenet, the morrow after the Act. And touching that you 

 write therein about your Origanus, for which I thank you, 

 and your Kepler : because you signified you were likely to 

 be from home, I have written to Mr. Crane of New College, 

 with w r hom you wished me to leave them in your absence, 

 and sent money to buy others of the same for me, or rather 

 for yourself, because, as I told you, yours were somewhat 

 bruised and wronged by my carriage, and peradventure might 

 be more in the recarriage. 



Now whereas you renew your motion of demonstrating, 

 thereto I answer still, as before, bene mones. And whenso- 

 ever you or any man else from generality shall proceed to 

 particular specifying of any assertion of mine not sufficiently 

 demonstrated and proved according to the nature thereof, I 

 will, by God's grace, do my best endeavour to demonstrate 

 and prove it better. But I hold not a diagramme the only 

 way and means of demonstrating, nor so generally necessary 

 as you seem to urge. To give you an instance ; I met the 

 other day at London, with Lansbergius his Progymnasmata 

 Astronomise restitutae, where in the 10 pag. applying the 

 sun's parallaxe to Hipparchus his ^Equinoctial observations, 

 to make them serve his turn, he sets down a diagramme to 

 demonstrate that the true vernal aequinox is sooner, and the 

 true autumnal later than the apparent, in regard of the paral- 

 laxe, which to me seems superfluous. For having granted 

 that the parallaxe makes the sun seem lower than truth, he 

 that cannot thereupon conceive that, in his ascent, he attains 

 the vernal sooner than he seems to attain it, and contrarywise 

 in his descent he seems to attain the autumnal sooner than 



