on the broad bosom of the Thames, prying into the optical secrets of
lenses, and inventing his perspective trunks by which he could bring
distant objects near, Hariot in foggy England of the north was working
out almost the same brilliant series of discoveries that Galileo was
making in Italy. To this day, with our undated and indefinite material,
even with the new and much more precise evidence now for the first time
herewith produced, it is difficult to decide which of them first
invented the telescope, or first by actual observation with that
marvellous instrument confirmed the truth of the Copernican System by
revealing the spots on the Sun, the orbit of Mars, the horns of Venus,
the satellites of Jupiter, the mountains in the Moon, the elliptical
orbits of comets, _etc._ It is manifest, however, that they were both
working in the same groove and at the same time.

Hariot was undoubtedly as great a mathematician and astronomer as
Galileo. In 1607 at Ilfracombe and in South Wales, he had taken by hand
and Jacob's staff, the old patriarchal method, valuable observations of
the comet of that year, and compared notes with his astronomical pupil
William Lower, and afterwards with Kepler. This comet, now known as
Halley's, ought perhaps to have been named Hariot's, for it confirmed
his notions that the motions of the planets were not perfect circles and
afforded probably the germ of his reasoning out the elliptical orbits of
comets, especially afterhis friend and correspondent [see infra, pages
178-180] Kepler's book _de Motibus Stella Atartis_ came out in 1609, and
he had invented and improved his telescope or perspective ' truncke' or
cylinder in 1609-10.

It is not positively stated that Hariot held direct correspondence with
Galileo in 1609 and 1610 or even later, but the evidence is strong that
he was promptly kept informedof what was going on in Italy in