Maria a Vinchio, made in the Convent of Santa Maria at the Temple in Casale in the years 1746-1747-1748.” The celestial globe is similarly mounted, having a title legend which reads “Globus coelestis Circa quem spectabiliores, magisque obviae stellae juxta dispositionem et situm, longitudinis scilicet ac latitudinis gradū, in quo ab Auctore Universi in Firmamento sunt positae, dispositae inspiciuntur; singulis tamen figuris a Poetis ideatis, ab Astromomis diductae, et assignatae novissime auctus. F. Maria a Vinchio O. M. S. O. Anno 1750.--Opifex.--1751.” “Celestial globe in which are to be seen more clearly and more distinctly set forth the stars according to their places and positions, that is, their degrees of longitude and latitude where they have been placed in the firmament by the Creator of the Universe. To which have been added the figures of the constellations idealized by the poets, brought to earth and assigned their true places by astronomers. F. Maria a Vinchio of the Strict Order of the Minorites maker. In the year 1750-1751.” The figures of the constellations are well drawn and are colored, the names of these constellations being given in Latin. This pair of Maria’s globes may be found in the Biblioteca Municipale of Alessandria, in which town he probably lived at the time of their construction, and probably at the convent of the Capuchin monks. Prefixed to his ‘Select Mechanical Exercises,’ first issued in the year 1773, James Ferguson (1710-1776), Scotch experimental philosopher, physicist, and astronomer (Fig. 127), gives us a most interesting specimen of autobiography.[159] It is a remarkable story of native genius and of self-instruction. Herein he tells us how the child of poor parents, with an unquenchable desire for scientific knowledge, proceeded in his early years, step by step, until at length he attained to a position of great renown, not only in his own country but as well in other lands. He tells of his early interest in simple mechanical problems and of his attempts at the solution of the same, but what is of special interest here, he relates how it was he became interested in geography and in the construction of globes and orreries. From a description of a globe he had found in ‘Gordon’s Geographical Grammar,’ as he tells us, “I made a globe in three weeks turning the ball thereof out of a piece of wood.” This he covered with paper and delineated thereon the map of the world. He was happy to find, as he says, “that by using the globe, which was the first I ever saw, I could solve the problems.” In his second attempt at globe making, his boyish ingenuity particularly exhibited itself. Finding two large globular stones on the top of a neighbor’s gate-posts, he painted on one of these, with oil colors, a map of the terrestrial globe, and on the other a map of the celestial, from a planisphere of the stars which he had copied on paper from a celestial globe belonging to a neighboring gentleman. “The poles