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On the 29th of June, 1861, crossing the river Loddon, Howitt encountered a portion of Burke's company under the lead of Brahe, the fourth lieutenant. Four of his men had died of scurvy, and the rest of his little band seemed utterly dispirited.
Was Tycho Brahé a nonentity because he was not Kepler? Was Van Helmont nothing because he was not Lavoisier? Yet Tycho Brahé was an empiric he was the last of the observers of the concrete, if you will allow me the phrase. He was scientifically the father of Kepler." "That is very well put," said Claudius. "But we were talking of destiny. You are an observer."
Here he worked for a few years, with Kepler as one of his assistants, and he died in the year 1601. It is an interesting fact that Tycho Brahe had a firm conviction that mundane events could be predicted by astrology, and that this belief was supported by his own predictions. It has already been stated that Tycho Brahe maintained that observation must precede theory.
It seems to me, also, that far too little is said about the kind of work by which Kepler and Newton finally established the accepted theories. There is a strange charm in the history of those twenty years of Kepler's life during which he was analysing the observations made by Tycho Brahe.
When Tycho learned that Rudolph was particularly fond of mechanical instruments and of chemistry, he resolved to complete and to dedicate to him his work on the mechanics of astronomy, and to add to it an account of his chemical labours. This task he soon performed, and his work appeared in 1598 under the title of Tychonis Brahe, Astronomiæ instauratæ Mechanica.
Hipparchus and the Greek astronomers of the Alexandrian school, shaking off the vagaries of magic and divination, placed astronomy on a scientific basis, though the reaction of the Middle Ages caused even such a great astronomer as Tycho Brahe himself to revert for a time to the practice of astrology. The transparent sky of Egypt, rarely obscured by clouds, greatly favored Ptolemy's observations.
Let us remember his improvements of seven and twenty years, if we cannot forget his crime. A ship sails away, quitting the Danish shores. A man leans against the mast, casting a last glance towards the Island Hueen. It is Tycho Brahe. He raised the name of Denmark to the stars, and was rewarded with injury, loss and sorrow. He is going to a strange country.
He longed to engage in the practical work of observing. He saw that the progress of exact astronomy must depend largely on the determination of the positions of the stars with all attainable accuracy. He accordingly determined to take up this branch of work, which had been so successfully initiated by Tycho Brahe.
The inequality of motion in question, in virtue of which the moon moves quickest when she is at new or full, and slowest at the first and third quarter, was rediscovered by Tycho Brahe six centuries later; a fact which in itself evidences the neglect of the Arabian astronomer's discovery by his immediate successors.
Wright and Brahé then rejoined the camp at Bulloo, when all moved back to Menindie, and reached that place on June 18. Brahé at once set off for Melbourne, and by this time everyone there seemed to be alive to the necessity of sending out to look for the explorers. Two steamers were despatched to the Gulf of Carpentaria, and a relief party, in charge of Alfred Howitt, up to the Cooper.
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