464 ' SCIENTIFIC RECREATIONS. 



after a while appeared to be going backwards, so quickly were they 

 overtaken and passed." " Objects at a distance were approached in the 

 twinkling of an eye, and were left far in the rear." So it is evident that, had 

 locomotion by steam not been adopted, the mode of sailing on land would 

 have eventually become the most rapid mode of transit, and it is rather 

 remarkable that it was never adopted as a mode of travel. 



But Bishop Wilkins had not to reproach himself on this account, for 

 he adapted the principle of the windmill to carriages, " so that the sails would 

 turn and move his car, no matter in what direction the wind was blowing." 



Fig. 492. On the Kansas Pacific Railway. 



He proposed to make these sails act upon the wheels of a carriage, and 

 trusted to " make it move in any direction, either with the wind or against 

 it ! " This suggestion has been lately adopted in the United States, and it 

 is curious that after two hundred and fifty years no better mode for utilizing 

 wind-power on land has ever been found. Perhaps the ice-boats already 

 mentioned may be the forerunners of some new system of " land transport," 

 for which enormous kites have been made available. 



It is somewhat remarkable that if the introduction of railroads quite 

 " took the wind out of the sails " of any other mode of locomotion on terra 

 finna, it is that very iron track which has led to the reintroduction of sails 



