THE DISCOVERY OF THE SUN SPOTS. 685 



errors in the reasoning of Apelles concerning the direction of the 

 sun's rotation. 



In Mario Welser's first letter to Galileo, dated January 6, 1612, 

 he asks Galileo's opinion concerning the spots discovered by 

 Scheiner, and forwards three of the latter's famous letters. Three 

 months afterward (May 4, 1612) Galileo answers him in a very 

 long letter, saying that he has been observing the spots for eight- 

 een months, that he has shown them to several friends, and has 

 besides within a year exhibited them to many prelates and lords 

 at Rome. According to this, he must have seen the spots as early 

 as the end of November, 1610 ; and the discovery, or first obser- 

 vation, must have been as early as the summer of 1610, or before 

 Galileo removed from Venice to Florence, the change of residence 

 taking place at the end of August, 1610. It is proved, in fact, by 

 a letter from the friar Fulgence Servita, a theologian of the Most 

 Serene Republic, that he showed the spots to Father Paolo. It is 

 not easy to divine why Galileo, usually so careful of his rights, 

 did not this time make a claim for priority in discovery ; but it 

 may be supposed that by the side of the discovery of the Medici 

 stars, Saturn's rings, and the phases of Venus, that of dark points 

 on the sun, changing in character and disappearing according to 

 the position of the star, appeared of trifling importance to him ; 

 and this is to a certain extent confirmed by the reply to Welser. 

 Galileo's observations, in fact, did not begin to be known till in 

 1612 ; and if we did not trust to his assertions or to ocular testi- 

 mony, Fabricius, Scheiner, and perhaps others, made the discov- 

 ery before him; but this would not be a fair judgment. It must 

 be admitted that Galileo first observed the spots on the sun with 

 the aid of the Lippersheim glass ; but his earliest notices on the 

 subject did not appear till the spring of 1612, while the earliest 

 publication on it is that of Fabricius, who discovered the spots on 

 March 9, 1611, in complete ignorance that Galileo had observed 

 them eight months before. 



The false Apelles pretended that he had observed the spots 

 for the first time, together with one of his pupils, in March, 1611. 

 How, then, could Kepler have written to David Fabricius of " the 

 sun spots seen by your son long before, Apelles," if, as we know 

 now, Jean discovered them in March, 1611 ? No one was more in 

 the current of events than Kepler, and he was astonished at the 

 letters of Apelles. Besides, Scheiner told Welser that he had ob- 

 served some darkish things on the sun, but attached no impor- 

 tance to them till October, when he resumed his observations 

 that is, after Jean Fabricius's book had been published. 



It finally appears from Dr. Berthold's book that (1) Galileo 

 was the first to observe the spots on the sun with the Lippersheim 

 telescope in the summer of 1610, but he did not publish his draw- 



