THE POSSIBILITY OF SOARING IN HORIZONTAL WIND. 207 
THE POSSIBILITY OF SOARING IN HORIZONTAL 
WIND 
By Lawrence HarcRrave. 
[With Plate XVII.] 
[Read before the Royal Society of N. 8S. Wales, September 1, 1897.] 
THERE is a publication called the Aeronautical Annual, edited 
by James Means, Boston, Mass. In No. 2 and 3 of that work, 
Mr. Octave Chanute goes exhaustively into the question of sailing 
flight, and specifies every letter and article that bears on the 
subject. This paper may be said to take up the running where 
Mr. Chanute leaves off. My reasons for not writing to that 
periodical ‘straight, are that publication would be delayed for 
many months ; and the state of the art is such that at any moment 
some one of the many who are investigating this subject may drop 
on the facts stated in this paper, take out a master patent which 
would rule the construction of all future flying machines, and tax 
us all round for our good as the protectionists say, thus throwing 
our work back for years. I therefore, with your permission, read 
this paper and show the models that work as I describe, and 
thereby destroy the novelty of the invention for all time. 
The point of doubt has been, how to account for the phenomenon 
of soaring in a horizontal wind. There is no difficulty in soaring 
‘if we assume an upward trend in the wind such as a cliff, build- 
ing or sloping hill will produce. But when we see birds soaring 
in light wind and storm something beyond our knowledge is 
recognized as being at work. 
Mr. Chanute shows the profile of a number of soaring and non- 
soaring bird’s wings, and points out the downward projecting lobe 
at the front edge of the former, and also that there is a sharp e 
curve just abaft the lobe on the under side. (Plate 17 fig. 1.) 
