there was a great deal of work to be done yet ere the true system of the world could be indisputably proved. In the note already alluded to Tycho sets forth the arguments which he had made use of. These refer only to the rotation of the earth, as he thought the two other motions would be untenable when that was disproved. He maintains that though the thin and subtle air might follow the rotatory motion, a heavy falling body would not, and if two projectiles were shot out with equal force, one towards the east and the other towards the west, he was sure they would go equally far, and thus prove that the earth was stationary. The enormous velocity with which the eighth sphere revolves in twenty-four hours he considers a proof of the wisdom and power of God; and as motion is more noble than rest, it is natural that the æthereal world should be in motion and the lower and coarser earth at rest, and this idea he dwells on at some length.
Rothmann left Tycho on the 1st September 1590, ostensibly to return to Cassel; but whatever the reason may have been, he went instead to his native place, Bernburg in Anhalt. After a long silence he wrote once more to Tycho in September 1594, but his letter was only a short one, complaining greatly of his health and inquiring why Tycho's book on the comet of 1577 had not yet been published. Tycho wrote him in January 1595 a very long answer, which is almost entirely taken up by a defence of his book on the comet against the attack made on it by John Craig, formerly Professor of Logic and Mathematics at Frankfurt on the Oder, and now Physician to the King of Scotland.[1] Craig had in 1588, through the intercession of a countryman (no doubt Liddel), obtained a copy of the book, and had written to Tycho trying to disprove the conclusion at which
- ↑ Chalmers' Gen. Biograph. Dictionary, London, 1815, vol. xx. p. 243. Tycho does not mention his name.
