In Italy, Galileo is generally supposed to have discovered independently the method of making a telescope on the principle of the Dutch philosophers, about the beginning of 1609, having received a very imperfect account of these instruments somewhere about that time. It may be remarked that in his letter to the chiefs of the Venetian Republic, giving an account of the properties of these new instruments, Galileo states that, if necessary, they could be made specially for the use of the navy and army belonging to the state. But secrecy was useless, for telescopes were already made and sold in Holland at a cheap rate. Besides, Galileo makes no allusion to the labours of his Dutch predecessors, either in a prior letter handed down to us by Venturi, or in the decree of the Venetian Senate, dated August 5, 1609. The Italian commentators are in error when they attribute the second discovery of the telescope to the knowledge that Galileo possessed of the laws of refraction, and that it was by deductions therefrom that he was enabled to construct his first instruments. Huyghens says, in his _Treatise on Dioptrics_, “I will unhesitatingly place that man above all mortals, who, by the aid of his own reflections and without the aid of accident, first succeeded in constructing a telescope.” “Let us see,” says Arago, when speaking on this subject, “if Lippershey and John Adrian Metius were men of unparalleled powers.” Hieronymus Saturnus tells us that an unknown man of genius called upon Lippershey, and ordered from him a number of convex and concave lenses. At the time agreed upon the man returned, and chose two, one convex and the other concave, and, placing them one before his eye and the other at some distance from it, drew them backwards and forwards, without giving any explanation of his manœuvres, paid the optician, and left the place. As soon as he was gone, Lippershey began immediately to imitate the experiments of the stranger, and soon found that distant objects were brought apparently nearer, when the lenses were placed in certain positions. He next fastened them to the ends of a tube, and lost no time in presenting the new instrument to Prince Maurice of Nassau. According to another version, Lippershey’s children were playing in their father’s shop, and were looking through two lenses, one convex and the other concave, when they found to their surprise that the vane on the clock-tower of Middleburg Church was greatly magnified and apparently brought nearer. The surprise expressed by the children having awakened the attention of Lippershey, he tried the experiment of fixing the lenses on a piece of board; afterwards he tried it again by fixing them at the ends of two pieces of tube, sliding in each other, and succeeded in making the first telescope on record.