astronomical and mathematical discovery, as well as in Germany and
elsewhere. That he was using a ' perspective truncke ' or telescope as
early as the winter of 1609-10, and that his ' servaunte ' Christopher
Tooke (or as Lower in 1611 familiarly called him' Kitt') made lenses for
him and fitted them into his 'trunckcs' for sale by himself, is known.
From this circumstance,and from the fact that he disposed of many '
trunckes ' by his will, and left a considerable stock of them to Tooke,
it is manifest that he manufactured and traded in telescopes from 1609
to 1621. With his invention of the telescope then it required no
correspondence with Galileo to induce him to rake the heavens and sweep
our planetary system for new astronomical discoveries. To an astronomer
of his activity and mathematical acumen these discoveries followed as a
matter of course. Like Galileo he may have borrowed from the Dutch (or
quite as likely they of him) the idea that by a combination of lenses it
was possible to bring distant objects near, but that he worked out the
idea independently of Galileo admits hardly of a doubt. But he seems to
have been less ambitious than Galileo to claim priority in either the
invention or the discoveries that immediately followed. In this
connection the following hitherto unpublished letter will be read with
interest:

LETTER OF SIR WILLIAM LOWER _in South Wales to_

THOMAS HARIOT _at Sion_ 21 _June_ 1610.

_Printed from the holograph original in the British Museum_

I gaue your letter a double welcome, both because it came from you and
contained newes of that strange nature ; although that wch I craued, you
haue deserved till another time. Me thinkes my diligent Galileus hath