were announced. He therefore
adopted a method in common use among astronomers in those days, by which
the letters in a sentence announcing a discovery were transposed so as
to form an anagram.

Galileo announced his next discovery in this manner, and which read as
follows:--

Smaismrmilme poeta leumi bvne nugttaviras.

This, when deciphered, formed the sentence:--

Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi.

I have observed that the remotest planet is triple.

Galileo perceived that Saturn presented a triform appearance, and that,
instead of one body, there were three, all in a straight line, and
apparently in contact with each other, the middle one being larger than
the two lateral ones. In a letter to Kepler he remarked: 'Now I have
discovered a Court for Jupiter, and two servants for this old man, who
aid his steps and never quit his side.' Kepler, who excelled as an
imaginative writer, replied: 'I will not make an old man of Saturn, nor
slaves of his attendant globes; but rather let this tricorporate form be
Geryon--so shall Galileo be Hercules, and the telescope his club, armed
with which he has conquered that distant planet, and dragged him from
the remotest depths of Nature, and exposed him to the view of all.'
Continuing his observations, Galileo perceived that the two lateral
objects gradually decreased in size, and at the expiration of two years
entirely disappeared, leaving the central globe visible only. He was
unable to assign any reason for this peculiar occurrence, which caused
him much perplexity, and he expresses himself thus: 'What is to be said
concerning so strange a metamorphosis? Are the two lesser stars consumed
after the manner of the solar spots? Have they vanished and suddenly
fled? Has Saturn, perhaps, devoured his own children? Or were the
appearances, indeed, illusion or fraud, with which the glasses have so
long deceived me, as well as many others to whom I have shown them? Now,
perhaps, is the time to revive the well-nigh withered hopes of those
who, guided by more profound contemplations, have discovered the fallacy
of the new observations, and demonstrated the utter impossibility of
their existence. I do not know what to say in a case so surprising, so
unlooked-for, and so novel. The shortness of the time, the unexpected
nature of the event, the weakness of my understanding, and the fear of
being mistaken, have greatly confounded me.' After a certain interval
those bodi