This page has been validated.
KEPLER'S CONTINUATION.
87
orb of the earth, just like a faithful dog which goes round and round his master on some journey, now running in front, now deviating to this side or that, in ever-varying mazes, let him look at the planet Jupiter, which, as this telescope shows, certainly carries in its train not one such companion only, like the earth, as Copernicus showed, but actually four, that never leave it, though all the time hastening each in its own orbit.
But enough has been said about these matters in my Discussion with the Sidereal Messenger. It is time that I should turn to those discoveries which have been made since the publication of Galileo's Sidereal Messenger, and since my Discussion with it, by means of this telescope.
Galileo's discovery of Saturn's ring (imperfectly).It is now just a year since Galileo wrote to Prague, and gave full notice that he had detected something new in the heavens beyond his former discoveries; and that there might not be any one who, with the intention of detracting from his credit, should try to pass himself off as an earlier observer of the phenomenon, Galileo gave a certain space of time for the publicatiou of the new phenomena which any one had seen; he himself meanwhile described his discovery in letters transposed in this manner: smaismrmilmepoetaleumibunenugttauiras. Out of these