tLe Grand Duke of Tuscany,—" Most Serene Duke, it often be- 
iai Is travellers in unknown countries, that, hastening through 
f mountainous tract unto a town standing on the top of a 
hill, taey think it hard by, as soon as they come in sight of it ; 
the manifold turnings and windings of the ways thereto retard 
their hopes unto a trouble. For [at first] they have only a 
view of the nearest tops, but they cannot guess what is hidden 
by the interposition of those high places ; whether they be 
lower lulls or deep valleys, or plain fields, because with their 
flattering hopes they measure the distances of places by the 
eagerness of their desires.” It is not the sight of the hill- 
tops, nor even that of the town beyond them, that gives 
the traveller difficulty and the danger of error, but the effort 
o wfe 'i, of to form tlie thought which will truly represent the 
unseen distances between. “So,” says this learned Dane, 
Having once or twice seen those grounds out of which are 
lugged up shells and other such-like things cast up by the 
sea, and found that those earths were the sediments of a 
turbid sea, and that everywhere we might estimate the num- 
ber of times how often the sea had been troubled here and 
K 6 ’ i il 1 / " ot P 111 ^ lma gined by myself, but confidently 
attuned to others, that the whole business [of accounting for 
them] would be an inquiry and work but of a very short 
tune. ■■ There was no difficulty to Steno as to the facts ; but 
when he undertook to produce the true thoughts which would 
represent the relations of those facts, he found himself encoun- 
tering the real labour of science. 
f lld yet it is not in the field of patient inference from 
acts that either great difficulty or danger may be said to 
f , we ar ® satisfied to accept the certain thought which 
.airly compared facts gradually give us, and to wait patiently 
^crease of such true light, we may learn an iucalcu- 
Li e amount of relative truth. Much that cannot be seen 
as / eal t0 ns > and oven far more powerful and precious 
its influence over us, than anything that is seen. For 
bed of Ho? m 7 observe how a shellfish lives and dies in the 
■ ild observe 1 it pr f ent y me > leav i n 8' its shell in the sand, 
lock which • 1S ° v i°™ ° f a similar she11 imbedded in a 
note’tW tr t°n r' gh ab0Ve the level of tbe sea - We may 
creatuie to wwl ht rm f ?,° 1 lm f edded as to indicate that the 
verv slnd*of which *w “ belou 8' ed lived and died in the 
l i t tha l T k 18 co mposed, just as the modern 
one lived and died under the present waters of the ocean. We 
* X quote from an interesting old volume entitled « 
ft 8olidt:k 
Prodrcmus to a 
By Nicolaus 
