advantage of an appeal to certain superstitions which he found still lingering among both the learned and the unlearned. By reason of their size and the great care with which they had been prepared, his globes must have found general favor, not only with those of rank and distinction, for whom copies _de luxe_ were issued, but with geographers and scholars in general, who found it possible to obtain at a comparatively small price the more modest copies. That they found favor in Germany is assured us by Mercator’s correspondence with Camerarius of Nürnberg, in which mention is made of the sale of six pairs of his globes in that city, and of others at the Frankfort book market.[278] Thomas Blundeville tells us in his ‘Exercises’ that Mercator’s globes were in common use in England until 1592,[279] and the number of his globes which have become known since 1868 in various parts of Europe assure us that copies of that master’s work must have been easily obtainable by those interested. Ruscelli, in referring to printed spheres, notes that they usually were made small, and that those of large size are not exact, but he adds that he had seen some that were three and one half palms in diameter, such as that which years ago Aurelio Porcelaga sent to him to examine, printed in Germany, and given to him by Monseigneur Granvella, to whom or to whose father, not recalling which, it had been dedicated, but which he remembered was very beautiful and very exact, being evidently engraved by one very expert, judged by the beauty of the design and the artistic quality of the letters.[280] Fiorini is of the opinion that these globes were Mercator’s, and that they were carried into Italy in the late years of the sixteenth century when a friendly relationship existed between certain Italian princes and the Spanish authorities then ruling in Flanders.[281]