86 OUR PHYSICAL WORLD 



chicken feathers. He was so confident when his wings were in 

 the making that they would carry him readily that he proposed 

 to fly across the English Channel. When he tried them out, 

 however, jumping from an elevation for a preparatory flight, he 

 found flying no easy art and fell, breaking a leg and losing his 

 ambition. Besnier, in France, in the reign of Louis XIV devised 

 an apparatus of four folding planes that spread out on the down 



FIG. 35. Besnier's flight apparatus 



stroke and closed on the upstroke (Fig. 35). They were carried 

 at the ends of light rods that balanced on the shoulders and were 

 worked by arms and legs. De Bacqueville, another Frenchman, 

 in 1744 tried to fly with four large planes, one attached to each 



FIG. 36. Marquis de Bacqueville's wings for flight 



hand and each foot (Fig. 36). His idea was that one could 

 swim in air as in water, since both are fluids, provided hands and 

 feet could be sufficiently enlarged. He tried his scheme, jump- 

 ing from a balcony overlooking a river, but fell into a passing boat. 



