Sir, —The article on Charles Edward Burton (HI 14.1, Jan./Feb. 2006) wasvery interesting and widened my knowledge of the history of astronomy.Although the Italian Giovanni Schiaparelli claimed in 1880 to havediscovered the network of ‘canals’, he was not the first. Thisphenomenon had been discovered by the German astronomer JohannHieronymus Schroeter (1745–1816), senior civil servant at ... Read more
