Venice intended to send an observer to Egypt, and Tycho takes occasion to address a suggestion to the Venetians that they should cause the latitude of Alexandria to be redetermined, to see whether there had been any change in this quantity since the time of Ptolemy, as maintained by some, and he offered to assist them in this undertaking with instruments and advice. The book is then wound up with a description, with views and plans, of Uraniborg and Stjerneborg (to which he adds some remarks about the necessity of a good site for an observatory), a map of Hveen, and a short account of his transversal divisions and improved sights.[1]
In the original edition of this book there was no engraved portrait of Tycho, but in several of the copies which he presented to distinguished or influential persons a portrait in water-colours is pasted on the back of the title-page. This portrait is much larger than any published portraits, and represents him bareheaded, very bald (with a small tuft of hair over the middle of the forehead), and a very woe-begone countenance. It does not offer much resemblance to the well-known engraving by Geyn of Amsterdam of 1586, which appears in Tycho's Epistolæ and in the edition of the Progymnasmata of 1610, which represents him standing in a kind of arch on which the arms of the families of Brahe and Bille, and of the families connected with them, are suspended. This engraving has been reproduced in Gassendi's book.[2] Another
- ↑ The figures in our Chapter V. are reduced copies of Tycho's figures. The principal contents of the Mechanica are given in the introduction to Flamsteed's Hist. Cœl. Brit., vol. iii., and the figures of the instruments are copied in the Mémoires de l'Académie for 1763.
- ↑ In the first issue of the Progymnasmata (1602) there is quite a different portrait, not resembling any other, but standing in the same arch. In Hofman's Portraits historiques there is another engraving by Haas of Copenhagen, apparently a copy (reversed) of Geyn's, which is reproduced in Weistritz's book.
