THE AVIATOR FLYING-MACHINE. 393 



Let us suppose ourselves looking through a glass, eye at the 

 eye-piece, at a balloon. It is large, gigantic, monstrous, the aero- 

 stat of to-day. Turn the glass, end for end. The balloon is 

 reduced, and becomes a mere point, imperceptible, lost. Such is, 

 from our point of view, the balloon of the morrow. It is well for 

 the present to use the balloon as a supplementary sustaining 

 instrument ; but let us always keep in mind that we shall thank it 

 as soon as possible for its services and show it the door. A hy- 

 pothesis should be to the physicist simply a provisional artifice for 

 the convenient grouping or explaining of a number of determined 

 phenomena ; and, to our view, a balloon is a similar artifice, the 

 present uses of which may be valuable. 



We had the honor some years ago of becoming acquainted with 

 MM. de la Landelle and Ponton d'Amecourt, warm partisans and 

 advocates of the doctrine of machines heavier than the air, which 

 originated, according to classical traditions, with Architas. They 

 convinced us, and we have since been their fervent disciple. We 

 are, in fact, a persistent admirer of the simple processes employed 

 in Nature and used in a marvelous way by birds to sustain them- 

 selves in the air and guide their flight, and specious calculations 

 have never caused us to doubt the possibility of a solution of the 

 problem of locomotion in the air by wholly mechanical means ; 

 and we have long regarded the solution of it as depending solely 

 on the discovery of a powerful and light motor. How many 

 examples does the history of natural philosophy present us of 

 calculations that have deceived — either because their starting- 

 point was false, or because we were mistaken in interpreting the 

 results ! 



What good does it do to descant on the forms and the details 

 of an air-machine when its most essential part, its soul we might 

 say — its motor — has not been found ? Could we give a rational 

 theory of telephony before Bell invented his electric telephone, or 

 of the transmission of force to great distances before the creation 

 of the Gramme machine ? 



We have received numerous letters during the last twenty 

 years from authors and inventors desiring to submit to us their 

 projects and arrangements of propellers. "It is all very well," 

 we have told them, " but, before sending me anything — have you 

 a motor?" "A motor? No, sir; we have thought about it, in- 

 deed, but have dej)ended on you for that," " If I had a motor," I 

 would reply, " I should have no need of your apparatus ; I have 

 a thousand of them, and my only trouble is in choosing between 

 them." The motor, in fact, is the essential thing ; having that, it 

 is a minor affair whether one prefers the aeroplane, the helicopter, 

 or the aviator ; it is a question of return — a question that must be 

 looked into, but which is strictly subordinate to the nature of 



