Sufficiat, quintâ dum linea tangitur umbra.
That is, the line next the Meridian, or within an hour of noon.
Doctrine of circular motions.
Of later years there succeeded new inventions, and horologies composed by Trochilick or the artifice of wheels; whereof some are kept in motion by weight, others perform without it. Now as one age instructs another, and time that brings all things to ruin, perfects also every thing; so are these indeed of more general and ready use then any that went before them. By the Water-glasses the account was not regular: for from attenuation and condensation, whereby that Element is altered, the hours were shorter in hot weather then in cold, and in Summer then in Winter. As for Scioterical Dials, whether of the Sun or Moon, they are only of use in the actual radiation of those Luminaries, and are of little advantage unto those inhabitants, which for many months enjoy not the Lustre of the Sun.
It is I confess no easie wonder how the horometry of Antiquity discovered not this Artifice, how Architas that contrived the moving Dove, or rather the Helicosophie of Archimedes, fell not upon this way. Surely as in many things, so in this particular, the present age hath far surpassed Antiquity; whose ingenuity hath been so bold not only to proceed below the account of minutes, but to attempt perpetual motions, and engines whose revolutions (could their substance answer the design) might out-last the exemplary mobility, and out measure time it self. For such a one is that mentioned by John Dee, whose words are these in his learned Preface unto Euclide: By Wheels strange works and incredible are done: A wondrous example was seen in my time in a certain Instrument, which by the Inventer and Artificer was sold for twenty talents of gold; and then by chance had received some injury, and one Janellus of Cremona did mend the same, and presented it unto the Emperor Charles the fift. Jeronimus Cardanus can be my witness, that therein was one Wheel that moved at such a rate, that in seven thousand years his own period should be finished; a thing almost incredible, but how far I keep within my bounds, many men yet alive can tell.
[CHAPTER XIX]
Of the Pictures of Mermaids, Unicorns, and some others.
Few eyes have escaped the Picture of Mermaids: that is, according to Horace his Monster, with womans head above, and fishy extremity below; and these are conceived to answer the shape of the ancient Syrens that attempted upon Ulysses. Which notwithstanding were of another description, containing no fishy composure, but made up of Man and Bird; the humane mediety variously placed not only above, but below; according unto Ælian, Suidas, Servius, Boccatius, and Aldrovandus, who hath referred their description unto the story of fabulous Birds; according to the description of Ovid, and the account thereof in Hyginus, that they were the daughters of Melpomene, and metamorphosed into the shape of man and bird by Ceres.
And therefore these pieces so common among us, do rather derive their original, or are indeed the very description of Dagon;Dagon the Idol, of what form. which was made with human figure above, and fishy shape below; whose stump, or as Tremellius and our margin renders it, whose fishy part only remained, when the hands and upper part fell before the Ark.1 Sam. 5. Of the shape of Artergates, or Derceto with the Phœnitians; in whose fishy and feminine mixture, as some conceive, were implied the Moon and the Sea, or the Deity of the waters; and therefore, in their sacrifices, they made oblations of fishes. From whence were probably occasioned the Pictures of Nereides and Tritons among the Grecians, and such as we read in Macrobius, to have been placed on the top of the Temple of Saturn.