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Uraniborg Tycho spent more than twenty years, from the end of 1576 to the spring of 1597, the happiest and most active years of his life. Surrounded by his family and numerous pupils, many of whom came from great distances to seek knowledge in the house of the renowned astronomer and assist him in his labours, frequently honoured by visits from men of distinction both from Denmark and abroad, Tycho during these years steadily kept the object in view of accumulating a mass of observations by means of which it would be possible to effect that reform of astronomy which was so imperatively demanded, and for which the labours of Copernicus had merely paved the way. But though the scientific work was never neglected, the pleasant little island afforded many means of recreation. The map in Braun's Theatrum Urbium shows that provision was made for games of various kinds in the orchards which surrounded Uraniborg, and in the south and east of the island there were places arranged for entrapping birds. There were plenty of hares and other small game, and Tycho caused a great number of fishponds to be made. Most of them lay in the south-western part of the island, connected by sluices into two rows which met in a lake, the second largest of all, from which a small river made its way through the cliff to the sea. On this spot Tycho afterwards built a paper-mill.