Page:Tycho brahe.djvu/74

52 doubt that fearful disturbances were in store for the generation that beheld the new star as well as for the following one? The moderation of Tycho's astrological predictions is therefore remarkable, and becomes more conspicuous if we compare his opinions with the many silly ones expressed by contemporary writers.

Before we say a few words about these, we shall, however, finish the review of the contents of Tycho's book. We have already mentioned that he did not think it worth while to print the astrological calendar for the year 1573, of which the treatise on the new star originally formed a part, but that he contented himself with publishing the introduction, setting forth the principles on which the calendar, or diary, as he calls it, had been constructed. This fills sixteen and a half pages. It begins with a good deal of abuse of the ordinary prognostications, the absurdities of which he intends to expose in a book to be called Contra Astrologos pro Astrologia. This intention he does not seem to have carried into effect, and two other treatises, which he says were already written, seem not to have been preserved. He remarks that both the Alphonsine and the Prutenic Tables are several hours wrong with regard to the time of the equinoxes and solstices, and it is useless to give the time of entry of the sun into any part of the Zodiac to a minute, as the sun in an hour moves less than 3′, a quantity which cannot be observed with any instrument. Some writers are foolish enough to give minutes and seconds when stating the time of any particular position of a planet, although at the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in 1563 the Alphonsine Tables were a whole