vations.[1] During the eighteenth century the ruins were occasionally mentioned by travellers, but nobody seems to have explored them.[2] About 1740 a stone with a Latin inscription was removed from the site of Tycho's paper-mill to his old home at Knudstrup, from whence it was later brought to the museum at Lund. In 1747 a cellar was accidentally found on the site of the servants' dwelling, at the north angle of the wall enclosing Uraniborg. It is still to be seen, and if the statement on Braun's map be correct, that it was used as a gaol, it can certainly not have been a pleasant abode, though doubtless not worse than other dungeons of those days.
Within the present century the ruins at Hveen have been more thoroughly examined. They suffered a further desecration about eighty years ago, when the south-western enclosure wall round Uraniborg was broken through, in order to build a schoolhouse there. The Swedish antiquary Sjöborg visited the island in 1814, but was chiefly inte- rested in the various slight antiquities from long before Tycho's time.[3] But in 1823 and 1824 the clergyman of Hveen, Ekdahl, examined the interesting spots carefully. At Uraniborg he found the deep well, which was easily cleaned out, and still gives excellent water; also some water-taps and pipes from the hydraulic works which had sent the water to various parts of the house. Parts of the foundation walls and some slight remains of the laboratory were also unearthed. At Stjerneborg Ekdahl was more successful, and found distinct traces of all the crypts, and one of them (F. on the plan, p. 106) in perfect preservation, with all the circular steps, and the low column in the middle, on which the large quadrant had formerly been fixed. The only ornament or inscription found was the stone with the words also put on Tycho's tomb: "Nec
- ↑ Voyage d' Uranibourg par M. Picard, Paris, 1680; also in Reccuil d'Observations, 1693, and in Picard's Ouvrages de Mathematiques, Amsterdam, 1736. This little book is remarkable for containing the first distinct description of the phenomena of aberration and nutation.
- ↑ Philos. Trans., xxii. p. 692, xxiii. p. 1407. Hell's Reise nach Wardoe und seine Beobachtung des Venus-Durchganges, Wien, 1835, p. 161. Hell and Sainovics were at Hveen in May 1770 on their return journey from Wardöhus. They give a rude diagram showing the ramparts, with a hole filled with water in the middle; also the site of Stjerneborg, the cellar found in 1747 (erroneously placed), and a hut where some Swedes had observed the transit of Venus.
- ↑ Sjöborg, Samlingar for Nordens Fornälskare, iii., Stockholm, 1830, 4to, p. 71 et seq.
