finishing of the book. The Landgrave offered to inquire at Frankfurt whether there might be one or two papermakers there who might be willing to go to Hveen, but Tycho wrote back that he had already got one.[1] In February 1591 the Landgrave wrote that he had heard of an animal from Norway, taller than a stag, of which there were some at Copenhagen and in the royal deer park at Frederiksborg, and he would like a drawing of it. Tycho answered that he did not know of any such animal, but some time ago a reindeer had been sent to Copenhagen from Norway, but had died during the summer; he sent, however, a drawing of it. The Landgrave again wrote that he had also twice got a number of reindeer from Sweden, and they seemed to thrive well in winter, and could draw a sledge on the ice, but they died as soon as warm weather came on. In his deer-park at Zapfenburg, the Landgrave had an elk since the previous autumn, and it skipped about well, and when he came driving in his little green carriage, the elk would run alongside like a dog. If Tycho could send him one or two tame ones, he would be very pleased. This Tycho promised to do, and added that he had himself had an elk on his estate in Scania, and had wanted to get it over to Hveen. In the first instance the animal had been sent to Landskrona Castle, where Tycho's niece's husband kept it for some days, until unluckily the elk one day walked up the stairs into a room, where it drank so much strong beer, that it lost its footing when going down the stairs again and broke its leg, and died in consequence. Tycho never succeeded in getting an elk for the Landgrave, nor in satisfying his curiosity concerning the gigantic animal called Orix, about which the Landgrave had first inquired.[2]
- ↑ Epist. astr., pp. 198, 202, 205, 215. In 1592 Tycho was buying rags in Seeland for his paper-mill (Danske Magazin, ii. 280).
- ↑ Epist. astr., pp. 195, 200, 201, 205, 210, 212, 214. In April 1592 the Landgrave wrote that he had got four elks from Sweden, but three of them had died, probably from eating too many rotten acorns (p. 269).
