What hath been done in the grinding of Optick-glasses in your parts, and how those beginnings, mentioned by you formerly, do continue and succeed, I very much covet to hear, 'Tis now above Ten Years, since I my self invented a peculiar way of grinding such Glasses, and reduced it also into practice; by which 'tis easie, without any considerable danger of failing, to make and polish Optick-glasses of any Conick Section, and that (which is most notable) in any dish of any Section of a Sphere: which Invention I have as yet discovered to none, my purpose being, for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, to describe the whole method thereof in my Celestial Machine, and to propose it to the Examination and Judgment of the Royal Society; not doubting at all, but they will find the way true and practicable, my self having already made several Glasses by it, which many Learned Men have seen and tryed.
Monsieur Hugens, inquiring also in a Letter, newly written by him to a Friend of his in England, of the success of the attempts made by an ingenious English Man for perfecting such Glasses, and urging the prosecution of the same,
so as to shew by the effects the practicableness of the Invention, mentions thereupon, That he intends very shortly to try something in that kind, of the success whereof he declares to have good hopes.
Monsieur du Son, that excellent Mechanician, doth also at this very present employ himself in London, to bring Telescopes to perfection, by grinding Glasses of a Parabolical Figure, by the means whereof he hopes to enable the Curious to discover more by a Tube of one Foot long, or thereabouts, furnished with Glasses thus figured, then can be done by any other Tubes of very many times more that length: The success hereof will ('tis thought) shortly appear.
An Advertisement of a way of making more lively Counterfeits of Nature in Wax, then are extant in Painting: And of a new kind of Maps in a low Relievo. Both practised in France.
This was communicated by the Ingenious Mr. John Evelyn, to whom it was sent from Paris is a Letter, as followeth.
Here is in our Neighbourhood a French-man, who makes more lively Counterfeits of Nature in Wax, then ever I yet saw in Painting, haveing an extraordinary address in modelling the Figures, and mixing the Colours and Shadows; making the Eyes so lively, that they kill all things of this Art I ever beheld; He pretends to make a visit into England with some of his Peices.
I have also seen a new kind of Maps in low Relievo, or Sculpture; For example the Isle of Antibe, upon a square of about eight Foot, made of Boards, with a Frame like a Picture: There is represented the Sea, with Ships and other Vessels Artificially made, with their Canons and Tackle of Wood fixed upon the surface, after a new and most admirable manner. The Rocks about the Island exactly form'd,
as they are upon the Natural Place; and the Island it self, with all its Inequalities, and Hills and Dales; the Town, the Forts, the little Houses, Platform, and Canons mounted; and even the Gardens and Platforms of Trees, with their green leaves standing upright, at if they were growing in their Natural Colours: in fine, Men, Beasts, and whatever you may imagine to have any protuberancy above the level of the Sea. This new, delightful, and most instructive form of Map, or Wooden Country, you are to look upon either Horizontally, or side-long, and it affords equally a very pleasant object.