To the interest in globe making north of the Alps in the first quarter of the sixteenth century attention may next be directed. In a letter written by Johannes Trithemius to Vuilhelmus Veldicus Monapius, dated August 12, 1507, may be found an early allusion to globes. He says: “Orbem terrae marisqui et insularum quem pulchre depictum in Vuormotia scribis esse venalem, me quidem consequi posse obtarum, sed quadraginta pro illo expendere florenos, nemo mihi facile persuadet. Comparavi autem mihi, ante paucos dies, pro aere modico sphaeram orbis pulchram in quantitate parva ...” “I wanted to buy a finely painted globe of the earth, seas, and islands, which I wrote was for sale in Worms, but I could hardly be induced to give such a price for it as forty florins. I purchased, however, a few days since at a low price, a beautiful terrestrial globe of small size.”[140] He wrote further, “Henricum de Bunau dies vita audini defunctum, sed libros eius et globum cosmographiae quem alim comparavit ex officina tua remanisse apud Saxoniae Principes, quod tu existimas non audini.” “I am informed that Henry Bunau died some time ago, but I never heard it said that his books and the cosmographical globe which he bought in your workshop remained with the Princes of Saxony, as you believe.”[141] It has been thought by some that the globe referred to as having been purchased in Worms was the globe of Waldseemüller. Since the discovery in 1902 of the long-lost Waldseemüller maps of 1507 and of 1516 by Professor Joseph Fischer, S.J., in the library of Prince de Waldburg-Wolfegg (Fig. 30), great interest has centered especially in the work of that early German map maker. As the new transatlantic discoveries of the Spanish and the Portuguese greatly quickened interest in geographical science and made necessary the construction of new maps in rapid succession, Germany, already a land in which the renaissance spirit had found an enthusiastic reception, and whose people were awake to every new interest, soon became a center for the spread of information concerning the new regions. Commercially important trade cities of this country had been for some time in intimate touch with the important maritime trade centers of Spain and Portugal. Word of the newest discoveries was quickly carried over the Alps to France and to Germany, and the latest publication of the writer on matters geographical had its references to the parts of the world newly found of which Ptolemy had not known. [Illustration: Fig. 30. Castle of Prince Waldburg de Wolfegg.]