NATURE'S OWN SEAPLANES HUBBS 335 



the multiplication of power and wealth, the binding together of the 

 world by instant means of communication, and rapid, facile means 

 of transportation — all these factors basic to modern civilization are 

 made possible by the turning of wheels. 



II 



The whirling motor and the Avhirling propeller, both involving 

 the principle of the wheel, are the essential points by which the 

 airplanes of man differ from flying fishes, nature's own seaplanes. 

 With this exception, vital it is true, modern airplanes are marvelously 

 close reproductions of flying fishes. To oiTset this defect in the 

 natural product, the flying fishes are the masters of both water and 

 air — submarines and seaplanes in one. 



Pioneers in aeronautics and designers of early aircraft made the 

 mistake of neglecting to study the most airplanelike of all animals, 

 the flying fishes. The idea had become so firmly fixed in man's mind 

 that birds are the preeminent animals of flight that they alone were 

 looked to in the attempt to discover the principles of flight. 



This firmly entrenched idea that bird flight is typical of all animal 

 flight has since the time of early records prevented a large proportion 

 of observers from appreciating the true method of fish flight. This 

 erroneous preconception, like thousands of other fixed ideas, has 

 blinded the eyes of man. It has put into his mental vision move- 

 ments of the flying fish's " wings " which his eyes did not see and 

 could not see, because they do not exist. Even some scientists, ob- 

 serving the fascinating flight of fishes, have thus duped themselves 

 into thinking they saw that which they did not see, allowing their 

 preconceived ideas of how fishes should fly to prevent them from 

 seeing how fishes do fly, or rather from registering in their minds 

 what their eyes must have seen. Most of the scientists who failed 

 to fight off these blinding effects of preconceived ideas, however, 

 were laboratory investigators, closet naturalists. Through the long 

 period when men have allowed their minds to put movements into 

 the flying fish's " wings ", trained field naturalists have seen that 

 these animals, while in the air, hold their supporting planes, the 

 greatly expanded pectoral fins, as rigidly as though they were made 

 of steel. 



The question whether fishes flap their " wings " in flight consti- 

 tutes one of the longest controversies in the history of natural science, 

 and is still in dispute, despite the numerous essentially correct obser- 

 vations noted above. It has been a common tendency to deduce how 

 fishes must fly, not only from preconceived ideas of the flight of birds 

 but also from generally errcmeous conceptions of the mechanics of 

 flight. Had half the energy which has been devoted to these profit- 



