under the direction of the senior Montgolfier
sent a balloon up at Versailles in presence of
the court, a balloon with a car containing a
sheep, a duck, and a cock; the first aëronauts;
the next in the same year were the Montgolfier
brothers.

Birds having been described as high-pressure
locomotives, a Manchester correspondent of the
Aëronautical Society F.D.A. gives an interesting,
valuable, and humourous account of his
experiments. When a very young man he
saw the experiments with locomotive engines
at Rainhill, near Liverpool, which prepared
public opinion for the railway between
Manchester and Liverpool; and thought he could
easily make an engine to fly by steam. Power
and lightness, and nothing more were necessary.
He made the wings valvular for the up-stroke
to let the air through, an obvious departure
from nature. His flying engine, and its first
performance shall be described in his own
words: "The cylinder of the engine was one-inch
bore, and three-inch stroke, the slide valve
was worked by an arrangement of tappets, and
the piston reciprocated rapidly without fly-wheel
or eccentric; the cylinder was firmly
fixed to the steam generator, or boiler. The
piston-rod was attached to a pair of wings, of a
triangular shape, and about two feet six inches
long. These opened somewhat like a Venetian
blind at the up-stroke, and closed during the
down-stroke, and moved through an arc of eighty
degrees. The heating surface in the generator
was about one hundred square inches.

"I have forgotten the weight of the whole,
but as there were only thin sheets of water in
the generator, it would perhaps be about six or
seven pounds. When all was ready for a trial,
I suspended the machine by a cord from the
ceiling of a room to about five feet from the
floor, then got up steam, and allowed it to
accumulate, so that there would be a good pressure
to start with. When the steam was turned on,
the wings worked vigorously, but the machine
jerked up and down, whirled round, rushed from
side to side, and, in fact, performed all kinds of
gymnastic movements within its limits (except
flying), to the great amusement of the particular
friends invited to witness the experiment. With
some difficulty I caught the model, and turned
off the steam, and was preparing for another
trial, when lo! the boiler exploded, filling the
place with steam, and scattering the red-hot
charcoal about the room. When the fog had
cleared up I looked up for my friends, but they
had all 'skedaddled ' away, as many 'friends'
do in the time of misfortune. Thus ended my
first attempt to fly by steam."

Grown a little wiser by experience, he next
tried to ascertain if his engine would not
absolutely fly, what amount of gravity it would
overcome by the action of its wings. He
suspended the engine from a long balance or screw-
beam, so that he could counterbalance it with
weights at the opposite end, but the up-stroke
of the engine drove the engine down and the
down-stroke up, so that when at work it beat
up and down violently. A subsequent experiment
with vanes proved to him that great power
is not necessary for flying. Bats, birds, and
insects make no violent exertions. The motion
of the wings of the rook, for example, would,
according to the doctrine of resistance, produce
only a few drachms instead of a pound of buoyancy.
The wing strikes elastic globules of air,
which propel it. The air pulses up against the
wing, somewhat like the breath which makes
the pea dance in the tobacco-pipe. The last
experiment of this gentleman was a very remarkable
one.... "I made another engine to be
moved by steam. Its construction was as
follows: On the top of a small but strong steam
generator I screwed a steam-tight, movable
joint; to this joint was secured a long brass
pipe, about three-eighths in internal diameter,
and to the end of this pipe I fixed my engine
and wings only (i.e., not the boiler). The brass
tube gave no support to the engine, for it was
jointed to the top at the steam boiler, as before
stated, and in some measure represented the
string of a kite, only it conveyed steam to the
engine. When all was ready, the generator
put on the fire of the smith's forge; the engine
and wings, at the end of the long pipe, rested
on a post or stump about two feet from the
ground. I turned the steam on at the generator,
when, to my great satisfaction, the engine
instantly flew into the air, and kept itself up to
the length of its tether. I increased the power
of the steam until the wings began to emit a
drumming sound, when suddenly they both
broke off close to the engine, which, of course,
came down like a stone."

The editor of Aërial Locomotion remarks,
that if the vulcanised india-rubber flexible steam
pipe had been known at the time, the author of
this paper would probably have preferred it;
and adds, "the idea is very ingenious and
worthy of the attention of experimenters." The
idea thus partially realised was anticipated by
the Poet Darwin. And after all the doubts
cast upon his prophecy in reference to aërial
navigation, it may happen yet that the couplet
on it shall be seen to be just as prophetic as
the couplet upon steam on land and water:

Soon shall thy arm unconquered steam, afar,
Draw the slow barge, and drive the rapid car;
Or on wide waving wings expanded bear,
The flying chariot through the streams of air.

Tennyson, like Darwin, has seen in vision
the coming age of flying machines, and both
predict war in the air. Very few years elapsed
after the publication of Darwin's prophecy,
before four lines of it became actual fact.

Fair crews triumphant leaning from above,
Shall wave their fluttering kerchiefs as they move;

a scene which most of us have witnessed; and
a quarter of a century had not passed before
the French gained a victory by reconnoitring
their enemies from a balloon, a step towards
the time when the lines will be realised—

Or warrior bands alarm the gaping crowd,
And armies shrink beneath the shadowy cloud.

The vision of aërial war may be only too
truly in accordance with human nature; but I