194 



EXTRACTS FROM A PAPER ON FLYING. 



My recent experiuieuts liave been uiade Iruiu liills liavini; an eleva- 

 tion of about 250 feet and sloping uniformly every way at an angle of 

 10 to 15°. From the lower ridge.s 1 have already sailed a distance of 

 over 250 yards. The great difficulty to be encouutereil in the endeavor to 

 soar comes in learning t) gaide the flight, rather than in the difficulty 

 of providing i)o\A'er to move the wings. 



Progress in the mechanics of flying received at one time a severe 

 clieck through the utterances of a high authority in physics. Starting 

 Avith an erroneous hypothesis and putting too high a Aalue on the 

 amount of work reipiired, he claimed that the maximum of possible 

 flight had already been devehjped in the largest birds, and, as man 

 represented about f »ur times the heaviest of them, human flight was 



to be discarded as an utter impossibility. Now, it nuist be admitted 

 that the difficulties increase with the size of the flying individual; but 

 flying itself is not the difficulty, for the largest flyers are at the same 

 time the best flyers when they once get going in the air. 



The object of this paper is to attempt to disi)el old prejiulices and to 

 win new adherents for the problem in question. Even considered only 

 as a physical exercise, the sjiort of flying would create one of tlie health- 

 iest of all enjoyments and add one of the most eflective remedies to the 

 means now adopted for the conipiest of those diseases which are inci- 

 dent to our modern culture. 



I 



f 



