. . .A notion of this kind reconciles the testimony of many conflicting witnesses on the subject, some of whom do not seem to distinguish very accurately whether the telescope or microscope is the instrument to which their evidence refers. Borelli arrives at the conclusion, that Jansen was the inventor; but not satisfied with this, he endeavours, with a glaring partiality which makes his former determination suspicious, to secure for him and his son the more solid reputation of having anticipated Galileo in the useful employment of the invention. He has however inserted in his collections a letter from John the son of Zacharias, in which John, omitting all mention of his father, speaks of his own observation of the satellites of Jupiter, evidently seeking to insinuate that they were earlier than Galileo's; and in this sense the letter has since been quoted,[42] although it appears from John's own deposition, preserved in the same collection, that at the time of thei. . . Read More