The volume is dedicated "To the right honourable and most noble lady, my dear and loving mother, the Lady Dowager of Cromartie." The "Epistle Dedicatory" is couched in the high-flown language which others would have had difficulty in concocting, but which seems to flow with ease from the lips of Sir Thomas. "Thus, Madam," he says, "unto you doe I totally belong; but so as that those exteriour parts of mine, which by birth are from your Ladiship derived, cannot be more fortunate in this their subjection, notwithstanding the egregious advantages of bloud and consanguinity thereby to them accruing, then [than] my selfe am happy, as from my heart I doe acknowledge it, in the just right your Ladiship hath to the eternall possession of the never-dying powers of my soule." The following passage from the same "Epistle" reminds one of the adulatory terms in which Sir Walter Raleigh and Spenser addressed Queen Elizabeth: "By vertue of your beloved society, your neighbouring Countesses, and other great dames of your kindred and acquaintance, become more illustrious in your imitation [_i.e._ in imitation of you]; amidst whom, as Cynthia amongst the obscurer planets, your Ladiship shines, and darteth the angelick rayes of your matchlesse example on the spirits of those who by their good Genius have been brought into your favourable presence to be enlightened by them." The concluding passage in his Dedication is still more remarkable: "I will here," he says, "in all submission, most humbly take my leave of your Ladiship, and beseech Almighty God that it may please his Divine Majesty so to blesse your Ladiship with continuance of dayes, that the sonnes or those whom I have not as yet begot, may attaine to the happinesse of presenting unto your Ladiship a braine-babe of more sufficiencie and consequence."[164] The ordinary reader who looks into the volume cannot fail to be appalled by the new and mysterious terms with which its pages are crowded. Words like "proturgetick," "quadrobiquadræquation," "sindiforall," "eathetobasall," "loxogonosphericall," and "zetetick," are freely used, and many others equally hard and thorny. Even the author himself finds it necessary to append to the work a glossary, containing an explanation of a number of the words of which he had made use. "Being certainly perswaded," he says, "that a great many good spirits [_i.e._ worthy souls] ply Trigonometry that are not versed in the learned tongues, I thought fit for their encouragement to subjoyne here the explication of the most important of those Greek and Latin termes, which for the more efficacy of expression I have made use of in this Treatise."[165]