368 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
antivolants say dogmatically that flight is impossible, on an 
3 assumed insufficiency of power compared with the weight of the 
machine, far more reasonably may they use the term on any 
attempt to imitate the flying mechanism of the albatross, for 
in this respect they may be quite right. 
If near one foot in length of wing is required for every two 
pounds that the bird weighs (it has more than this), the com- 
parison will be, that if a man and machine weigh together only 
300 lbs., he will require an extent of wing of 150 feet from 
end to end. Very little consideration will show this to be 
utterly impracticable. Let the machine be constructed of the 
lightest trussed work that can be contrived, with the smallest 
margin of strength, it will necessarily be exceedingly heavy, 
and present so much resistance to the air that excessive power 
would be required to propel it, and by reason of its rigidity it 
would probably be destroyed by collision with the ground at the 
very first experiment. It is the very elastic jointing of the 
wing of an albatross that constitutes its safety ; were it one 
long, taper, thin, tubular bone, the least violence would cause 
fracture ; but the wing, by the feeling of the animal, is caused 
to yield to circumstances, and can instantly be drawn away from 
risk of accident. 
These wings having been considered in their action as mere 
inclined planes, whose purpose and intention is to obtain a 
bearing upon a very wide stratum of air, then it follows that 
this stratum need not extend out in one line, but may be taken 
in different planes in superposed positions. It can readily be 
imagined that a dozen of these birds might fly at the same 
speed, at a certain distance one above the other, as if linked 
together, the weight of whose united bodies would not exceed 
that of a man and machine. This would be no violation of the 
principle herein described, and affords some chance for the 
construction of a very light and strong machine. A man might 
thus be sustained on a series of twelve wings or planes, not 
exceeding in length those of the albatross. These aeroplanes 
could be stretched by very light laths, merely for the purpose 
of keeping their surfaces flat, and connected with each other by 
a system of cords only, as the pressure of the air beneath them 
would cause them to rise free of each other. Nothing in the 
shape of a long heavy spar would be needed, as the cords of 
suspension for the whole system of aeroplanes could be brought 
down or converge at an angle to near the body of the machine. 
These surfaces are merely for support, and receive no motion. 
The propellers would be a detached and separate affair — either 
as two long rods vibrating vertically, with elastic blades yield- 
ing backwards from the line of motion, like a bird’s wing, or 
the arrangement might rotate like two vanes of a windmill or 
screw propeller. 
