VOL. XXIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 4Q 



was 64 feet in diameter. This tower was built 1601, for making astronomical 

 observations, near the Royal College in Copenhagen: it is above 150 feet 

 high, and its area on the top is 60 feet diameter ; the passage up to it is large 

 enough for two coaches, and the ascent so easy and hardly perceivable, that it 

 served for a place of parade for their gentry, when they had a mind to take the 

 air in their coaches, riding up to the top, and so round the ring, as well as for 

 an observatory. But M. Romer has converted the upper part of this tower now 

 to other uses, where in a dark room he has his instruments for observation. 

 Here I saw his machine for observing the stars by day; there is a pole 8 or 10 

 feet long, erected perpendicular in the centre of an equinoctial plain : on the 

 top of this pole is fastened a telescope, not much above 3 feet long, which runs 

 through the roof of the chamber, whose elevation is directed by an astrono- 

 mical dial on the equinoctial plain, with an index fitted to it for that purpose, 

 which determines it to the star he has a mind to observe at any time. 



It is said he has invented two other machines of great artifice and use; by the 

 one he will show at any time the station of any planet, according to the Coper- 

 nican hypothesis; by the other he will demonstrate all the eclipses of the sun 

 or moon, past or to come. 



There is in the king's house, in the garden at Copenhagen, a royal throne, 

 all of unicorn's horn, on which all the kings of Denmark are seated at their 

 coronation. 



An English gentleman showed me once in Holland, in the year 87, a cherry 

 stone, with 124 heads on the outside of it, so that you might distinguish with 

 the naked eye, popes, emperors, kings, and cardinals, by their crowns and 

 mitres. It was purchased in Prussia, where it was made, for 300/. English, 

 and is now in London, there having been a law-suit not long since commenced 

 about it in chancery. 



Gazophylaci Naturce et Artis ; Decas 1 . In qua Animalia, Quadrupedal Aves, 

 Pisces, Reptilia, InsectUy Vegetabilia ; item Fossilia Corpora^ Marina, et 

 Stirpes Minerales e Terra eruta, Lapides Figura insigneSj ^c. Descriptionibus 

 Brevibus et Iconibus illustrantur. Hisce annexa erit Supellex Antiquaria, 

 Numismatay Gemnne Eoccisce et Sculptures, Opera Figulina, Lucernes, Urnce, 

 Instrumentavaria, Inscriptiones, Busta, reliquaque ad Rem priscam speclantia ; 

 item Machines, Effigies Clarorum Ftrorum, omniaque Arte producla. A 

 Jacobo Petiver, R.S.S. Lond. 1702. N° 285, p. 1411. 



The author of these decades in natural history procured at his own private 

 expence many and great collections of plants, quadrupeds, birds, fishes, insects, 

 shells, figured stones, and other fossils, from his correspondents in the East 



VOL. V. H 



