(49). Item, a larger circular optick glass, about 4 inches diameter, made almost for the same purpose with the former, to receive outward specieses into a dark room; only this glass representeth them 4 times as bigg as the other, and at a much farther distance, which must be always observed as to the reception of the specieses. As this glass in a dark room, being placed to the hole, will render the reflexed species of the outward object full and large at a good distance, on a sheet of paper, or a fine napkin, or a large tablecloth, all the houses, windows, chimnies, trees, steeples, &c. that the sun shineth upon, and may be seen through the oager,[*] i. e. auger. all will be fairly represented on that paper or tablecloth or napkin.

I bought this glass of Myn Here Westleius, an eminent man for optics at Nurenburg, and it cost me 3 pistolls, which is about 50s English. The gentleman spoke bitterly to me against Father Kercherius, a Jesuit at Rome (of my acquaintance), saying that it had cost him above a thousand pounds to put his optic speculations in practice, but he found his principles false, and shewed me a great basket of glasses of his failings. He shewed me wonderful strange glasses, some oval, some round, some square, some convex, some concave, which produced strange deceptions of the sight, unspeakable. As I well remember, when I put forth my hand to one glass, there came an arm and a hand out of the glass, as long as mine; and when our hands met, I seemingly could put finger to finger, palm to palm; and when I went to clasp hands together, I grasped nothing but air. Then, drawing my sword, and at a farther distance thrusting the point towards the glass, out from the glass came a sword and an arm, as to my sight, into the room; and we met, point to point, two or 3 paces from the wall, into the chamber which was strange to me; and at lenght length he made my whole person seemingly to come out of the glass into the room to meet me.

Another large glass he had, which, being hanged at one side of the room, and a fair perspective picture of the inside of a church, with its arches and pillars, hanged at the other, at a due distance, the species do so strangely come out from the glass that you seem to be walking in a church. Remove that picture, and place in its room a fair garden, with oranges and lemon trees, and fountains and walks, &c., and by the reflex of that glass, in the middest of the room, one seemeth to walk in a garden, and so in a grove, &c. For these glasses he asked me, for one 200, for the other 150, pistolls; and I think I should have given him his money, if my quality and purse had had a proportion suitable for such a purchase.