40 A WOULD-BE FLIER. 



might do something not altogether useless it would 

 be worthy of our attention. The author of this sketch 

 remembers, long ago, a case in which a young man, 

 in a small country town, had got so much of the 

 formal or colloquial part of science, that he was 

 looked upon as a prodigy, and, among other things, a 

 very Archimedes in mechanics. Earth could not set 

 bounds to his ambition, and he would needs fly : 

 so, after months of labour, he produced a pair of 

 wings, and, mounting the top of a high barn at his 

 father's farm-yard, spread them for flight, and shot 

 boldly into the air ; but no shot pigeon, or even pig 

 of lead, was ever more true to the perpendicular ; 

 for the wings barely saved him from a very dan- 

 gerous fall. The consequence of this attempt at 

 flight was not only the loss of all the high repu- 

 tation which the party had previously enjoyed, but 

 so overwhelming a burden of ridicule that it broke 

 his spirit, and he became literally good for nothing 

 while he lived. 



The cases of all who attempt flying by mechanical 

 contrivances may not be quite so disastrous as this 

 one, but they must be all equally unsuccessful. Nor 

 does it appear that the guiding of a balloon, in any 

 other direction than that in which the current of the 

 air happens to drive it, can be more successful. 

 There is no fulcrum from which a purchase can be 

 obtained but the air itself; and the air presses equally 

 in all directions when still, and in the direction of 

 the wind with a force proportional to its velocity 

 when it blows. 



Still the bird, when it flies, overcomes mechanical 

 resistances, and, according to the general law of 

 matter, it must overcome them by mechanical means. 

 The bird, too, is very simple in its form, and certainly 



