n of the methods,
and inventions, and views of Tycho, and had enjoyed his hospitality for
three months, he pretended that he was obliged to return to Germany to
receive an inheritance to which he had succeeded. After quitting
Uraniburg, this ungrateful mathematician neither returned to see Tycho,
nor kept up any correspondence with him; and it was not till five years
after his departure that Tycho learned, from the letters of the Prince
of Hesse to Ranzau, that Witichius had passed through Hesse, and had
described, as his own, the various inventions and methods which had been
shewn to him in Huen.

Being unable to reconcile his own observations with those of Copernicus,
and with the Prutenic Tables, Tycho resolved to obtain new
determinations of the latitude of Frauenburg, in Prussia, where
Copernicus made his observations, and of Konigsberg, to the meridian of
which Rheinhold had adapted his Prutenic Tables. For these purposes he
sent one of his assistants, Elias Morsianus, with a proper instrument,
under the protection of Bylovius, Ambassador of the Margrave of Anspach,
to the King of Denmark, who was returning by sea to Germany; and after
receiving the greatest attention and assistance from the noble Canons
of Ermeland, he determined, from nearly a month's observations on the
sun and stars, that the latitude of Frauenburg was 54 deg. 22-1/2', in place of
54 deg. 19-1/2', as given by Copernicus. In like manner he determined that the
latitude of Konigsberg was 54 deg. 43', in place of 54 deg. 17', as adopted by
Rheinhold. When Morsianus returned to Huen in July, he brought with him,
as a present to Tycho, from John Hannovius, one of the Canons of
Ermeland, the Ptolemaic Rules, or the Parallactic Instrument which
Copernicus had used and made with his own hands. It consisted of two
equal wooden rules, five cubits long, and divided into 1414 parts. Tycho
preserved this gift as one peculiarly dear to him, and, on the day of
his receiving it, he composed a set of verses in honour of the great
astronomer to whom it belonged.

Among the distinguished visits which were paid to Tycho, we must
enumerate that of Ulric, Duke of Mecklenburg, in 1586. Although his
daughter, Sophia, Queen of Denmark, had already paid two visits to
Uraniburg in the same year, yet such was her love of astronomy, that she
accompanied her father and his wife Elizabeth on this occasion. Ulric
was not only fond of science in general, but had for many year