AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 509 



The subject was then laid on the table till the next evening, and Mr. 

 Stewart was called upon to read his paper on Aerial Navigation. 



H. L. Stewart's paper on aeronautics. 



Aerial navigation is not wholly of modern growth. The Greeks and 

 Romans, wise men of the middle ages, and philosophers of succeeding eras, 

 as well as enthusiasts of the present time, have believed it possible for men, 

 by the aid of artificial appliances, to swim in air as well as in water. This 

 was proposed, at first, to be accomplished by aid of artificial wings. The 

 mythological story, of Icarus, whose waxen pinions melted on his near 

 approach to the sun is no doubt, founded on an actual experiment. 



The first flying machine of which we have a circumstantial account is the ■ 

 wooden pigeon of Archytas, launched in the fourth century, and described 

 by Aulius Gellius. 



Friar Bacon and Albertus Magnus, each claimed the honor of the inven- 

 tion of the art of flying; and later. Bishop Wilkins, in his "Discovery of 

 the World," describes a carriage constructed with sails like a windmill, the 

 force of which was designed to drive it through the air. In fact, there was 

 scarcely an investigator of the occult sciences in the middle ages, from the 

 learned alchymists, necromancers and astrologists, to the hags who were 

 supposed to ride nightly on broomsticks to join the witches' revel upon the 

 Hartz Mountains, that had not the reputation of being able to ride at will 

 on the wings of the wind — a reputation to which most added by speculat- 

 ing on the means necessary to produce this efi"ect. By degrees, the science 

 of flying, with alchymy and astrology, fell from the hands of the learned 

 to the inheritance of the ignorant pretenders, who used it as a means to 

 delude the credulous populace. 



In the reign of James IV., cf Scotland, an Italian alehymist visited the 

 court, and so far ingratiated himself into the royal favor, by his promises 

 of furnishing, through his art, an unlimited supply of treasure, as to obtain 

 the grant of an abbey and encouragement in his schemes. Failing, after 

 repeated trials, to transmute clay into gold, and finding it necessary to 

 sustain the wavering faith of the court, by some new device, he manufact- 

 ured a pair of immense wings, composed of varied plumage, with which he 

 proposed to fly to France, from the walls of Stirling castle, and actually 

 took flight ; but was stopped in his career by coming suddenly to the ground, 

 breaking his thigh in his full. With ready wit, he excused the failure by 

 saying that he had unwisely made use of the feathers of dung-hill fowls, 

 which tended to the earth through natural sympathy ; had he used eagles* 

 pinions he should assuredly have taken an upward flight. The excuse sat- 

 isfied the credulous people; but we do not learn that his experiment — the 

 first authenticated one of the kind on record — was ever repeated. 



A second attempt was made a century after, in 1G17, at Tubingen, in 

 Wirtemberg, by a monk, who, incited to the adventure by a rector of a 

 grammar school, named Flcyden, who had demonstrated learnedly in a 

 treatise, the Art of Flying made Easy, took flight, provided with a pair of 



