1872.] Natural and Artificial Flight. 27 
from either shore by apparatus easily managed by one or 
two men. The illumination of Arnish Point by the apparent 
light for eighteen years, and the conveyance of gas under 
water at the Clyde for nine years, in both cases with very 
slight repairs, are facts demanding a more general extension 
of these principles. It is no longer a question of expense, 
as in the erection of the Eddystone and Bell Rock Light- 
houses, but an easy expedient calling for speedy recognition. 
While there are many situations where it would be impos- 
sible at any expense to construct a lighthouse, these 
generally admit of the employment of one of the apparatus 
described, and which would be equally efficacious. The 
* good done by the erection of our lighthouses in the saving 
of life and property is almost incalculable, and is fully 
an encouragement to proceed with the illumination of the 
smaller sea-marks. 
III. NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLIGHT. 
RTIFICIAL flight is by no means an idea of me- 
dizval or of modern times. Setting aside its 
consideration as a poetical and legendary attribute, 
there are tolerably authentic accounts, if not of the actual 
flight of man, of the imitation of the movements of birds in 
well-constructed automata. Archytas had a wooden dove 
capable of flight, and Regiomontanus made a wooden eagle. 
These, however, are merely historical records, and there are 
not many definite plans left to us until 1683, when Wilkins, 
Bishop of Chester, published his plans of an aérial chariot. 
From that time to the present hardly a year has passed 
without the appearance of some proposal, more or less 
visionary, to solve the problem of aérial navigation. But 
these proposals have only resulted in ignominious failure, 
sometimes fatal to the experimenter; and this is hardly a 
matter of wonder when we consider that, for long, little or 
nothing was known of the laws of gravitation and of the 
medium to be controlled. The methodical study of the laws 
of the natural flight of birds and insects has been negle¢ted 
even up tothe present time. It is, then, hardly just to 
condemn the student of aéronautics as one needing friendly 
care, until a complete series of experiments, conducted ac- 
cording to the light of present science, shall have shown the 
futility of the idea of artificial flight. It was an intention 
of research that called the Aéronautical Society into life, 
