NOTES. CXV 



munications by letter. Galileo, excited by the not forgotten law- suit against 

 Balthasar Capra, calls him a pupil of the Marius, " usurpatore del Sistema di 

 Giove" ; Galileo even reproaches the heretical protestant astronomer of Gunzen- 

 hausen with founding the apparently earlier date of his observation on a con- 

 fusion between the calendars. " Tace il Mario di far cauto il lettore, come 

 essendo egli separato della chiesa nostra, ne avendo accettato 1'emendatione 

 gregoriana, il giorno 7 di Geunaio del 1610 di noi cattolici (the day on which 

 Galileo discovered the sateUites) e 1'istesso, che il di 28 di Decembre del 1609 

 di loro eretici, e questa e tutta la precedenza delle sue finte osservationi" 

 (Venturi, Memorie e Lettere di G. Galilei, 1818, P. i. p. 279 ; and Delambrt, 

 Hist, de 1'Astr. mod, T. i. p. 696). According to a letter which Galileo 

 wrote, in 1614, to the Accademia di Lincei, he, somewhat unphilosophically, 

 thought of addressing his complaint against Marius to the Marchese di Brau- 

 deburgo. On the whole, however, Galileo continued well disposed towards 

 the German astronomers. He writes, in March 1611, " Gli ingegni singo- 

 lari, che in gran numero fioriscono nell' Alemagna, mi hanno lungo tempo 

 tenuto in desiderio di vederla" (Opere, T. ii. p. 44). It has always appeared 

 to me remarkable, that if, in a conversation with Marius, Kepler was playfully 

 cited as a sponsor for the bestowal of the mythological denominations of lo 

 and Callisto, there should not occur any mention of his countryman, either in 

 the Commentary to the Nuncius Sidereus, nuper ad mortales a Galilaeo missus, 

 published in Prague, in April 1610, or in his letters to Galileo or to the 

 Emperor Rudolph in the autumn of the same year ; instead of which, Kepler 

 every where speaks of "the glorious discovery of the Medicean stars by 

 Galileo." In publishing his own observations of the satellites, made from the 

 4th to the 9th of September, 1610, he gives to a little memoir which appeared 

 bt Frankfort in 1611, the title, " Kepleri Narratio de Observatis a se quatuor 

 Jovis Satellitibus erronibus quos Galilseus Mathematicus Florentinus jure in- 

 ventionis Medicea Sidera nuncupavit. " A letter addressed to Galileo from 

 Prague, Oct. 25, 1610, concludes with the words "neminem habes, quern 

 metuas semulam." Compare Venturi, P. i. p. 100, 117, 139, 144, and 149. 

 Baron von Zach, misled by a mistake, and after a by no means careful exami- 

 nation of the valuable manuscripts preserved at Petworth, the seat of Lord 

 Egremont, stated that the distinguished astronomer and Virginian traveller, 

 Thomas Harriot, had discovered the satellites of Jupiter at the same time as 

 Gaiileo, and even earlier. A more close examination of Harriot's manuscripts, 

 by Rigaud, has shewn that they began, not on the 16th of January, but only 

 on. the 17th of October, 1610, nine months after Galileo and Marius. (Com- 



