Notes on Flying-machines. 
By Lawrence HarcGrave. 
[Read before the Royal Society of N.S. W., 3 June, 1885.] 
Sryce last reading a paper to this Society, I have been making 
urther experiments with trochoided planes, and my attention has 
been directed principally to the question whether the speculations 
that were made about the flight of birds are correct, and if so, 
can a mec contrivance be constructed that would show 
what my views on the subject are. 
I have been unsuccessful in all attempts at vertical flight, and 
am disposed to modify the opinion po sg n that point, as it is 
evident that some birds when hovering use the same motion that 
they do when flying horizontally. This we can see in the small birds 
that suck honey from flowers when on the wing, the body is kept 
wards. 
With horizontal flight, more success has attended my efforts ; 
and experimenting with nearly fifty models has resulted in these 
that I hope to show you supporting themselves and moving hori- 
zontally in such a way thatif the motion is not that used by birds, 
scientific truth is of no further interest, as it only remains for 
practical mechanics to step in and adjust the details to suit the 
material and motive power they may think best for the purpose 
they have in view; or, in other words, that the solution of the 
a 
x 
Mr. Russell suggested to me that trial should be made with 
india-rubber as a motive power, or it has thus been possible to 
make an engine the weight and power of which approximates 
closer proportionally to the large ~— we use than the 
clock-work previously experimented w 
flyin 
the most important point, viz., os were all supported either oe 
strings or on wheels, and therefore could not be defined as flying- 
machines any more than those machines that depend for their 
success on floatation by the aid ks gas. 
