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Picard's observations at Paris from 1667 onwards seem to embody the first use of the telescope as a pointer. He was also the first to introduce the use of Huyghens's clocks for observing the right ascension of stars. Olaus Romer was born at Copenhagen in 1644. In 1675, by careful study of the times of eclipses of Jupiter's satellites, he discovered that light took time to traverse space.
It has received eulogies from Burton, from Castiglione, from Chatham, who, in reply to a compliment on a grand stroke of invention and successful oratory, said, "My success arose only from having been checkmated by discovery, the day before, at chess," from Comenius, the grammarian, from Conde, Cowley, Denham, Justus van Effen, Sir Thomas Elyot, Guillim, Helvetia, Huarte, Sir William Jones, Leibnitz, Lydgate, Olaus Magnus, Pasquier, Sir Walter Raleigh, Rousseau, Voltaire, Samuel Warren, Warton, Franklin, Buckle, and many others of ability in every department of letters, philosophy, and art.
Tornaeus was told many details of his journey by a Lapp, 'which, although it was true, Tornaeus dissembled to him, lest he might glory too much in his devilish practices'. Olaus Magnus gives a similar account. The whole performance, except that the seer is not bound, resembles the Eskimo 'sleep of the shadow, more than ordinary Highland second sight.
Olaus Wormius, in Musæ. 18º pag. 186. Musæ. Worm. pag. 99. Arte Vetraria, lib. 7 cap. 102. Made this 27th. of October 1663. about Mr. Clayton's Diamond.
Norman knew the animal as one of the most common in the "trade"; and in addition to what we have recorded, also related many adventures and stories current among the voyageurs, in which this creature figures in quite as fanciful a manner as he does in the works either of Olaus Magnus, or Count de Buffon. After remaining a day at their first camp on the lake, our voyageurs continued their journey.
Buffon and others have given credence to these tales upon the authority of one "Olaus Magnus," whose name, from the circumstance, might be translated "great fibber." There is no doubt, however, that the glutton is one of the most sagacious of animals, and so, too, is the wolverene. The latter gives proof of this by many of his habits; one in particular fully illustrates his cunning. It is this.
That appears in a book of travels by Olaus Magnus, Archbishop of Upsala in Sweden. Notwithstanding the gentleman's reverend quality, one must question somewhat the veracity of the chapter which he heads: "Of the Leather Ships Made of Hides Used by the Pyrats of Greenland." He professed to have seen two of these "ships," more probably boats, hanging in a cathedral church in Greenland.
Not only is it supposed that these poulps can draw down vessels, but a certain Olaus Magnus speaks of an octopus a mile long that is more like an island than an animal. It is also said that the Bishop of Nidros was building an altar on an immense rock. Mass finished, the rock began to walk, and returned to the sea. The rock was a poulp.
It has been asserted that the Norwegians, as early as the ninth century, discovered a great tract of land to the west of Iceland, which they called Grand Iceland; but this has been pronounced a fabulous tradition. The most plausible account is one given by Snorro Sturleson, in his Saga or Chronicle of King Olaus.
That the perpetual miracle of the budding leaves and the returning song-birds awakes no longer in us the astonishment which it awoke yearly among the dwellers in the old world, when the sun was a god who was sick to death each winter, and returned in spring to life and health, and glory; when the death of Adonis, at the autumnal equinox, was wept over by the Syrian women, and the death of Baldur, in the colder north, by all living things, even to the dripping trees, and the rocks furrowed by the autumn rains; when Freya, the goddess of youth and love, went forth over the earth each spring, while the flowers broke forth under her tread over the brown moors, and the birds welcomed her with song; when, according to Olaus Magnus, the Goths and South Swedes had, on the return of spring, a mock battle between summer and winter, and welcomed the returning splendour of the sun with dancing and mutual feasting, rejoicing that a better season for fishing and hunting was approaching?
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