i88o.j 
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Flighty Aspirations . 
over it in a horizontal direction, and which can be increased 
or diminished according to the angle in which it is propelled, 
I will quote some suggestive remarks of Mr. Glaisher, made 
at one of the Aeronautical Society’s meetings, upon the 
subjedt of the captive balloon then lately exhibited at Chelsea 
by Mr. Giffard : — “ That balloon has spoken to me trumpet- 
tongued. All my life I have been accustomed to weigh the 
air by grains. In winter I find the cubic foot to be about 
570 grains, and in summer 20 or 30 grains less. When we 
took grains we thought the air light. When 1 saw the other 
day that the balloon would lift 16 tons or more, and conse- 
quently that the weight of air displaced by the balloon must 
be of greater weight, there must, I think, be something for 
members of the Society to work upon. When you see that 
balloon as a small ball only, yet know that air to so many 
tons weight was displaced by it, surely it held out the hope 
that some means would be found to solve the problem of 
aerial navigation.” 
The method to be adopted to attack this thin though 
weighty medium, so as to wrest from it the means of support 
in safety, and the mode of propulsion, is of course the sub- 
je<5t of discussion and of some difference of opinion amongst 
experimenters. 
Sir Wm. Fairbairn stuck another barnacle on the good 
ship “ Progress” when he stated as his opinion, in a paper 
read at Stafford House, that “ Man was never meant to fly ; 
that if the Almighty had intended him to do so He would 
have given him wings, and that the unalterable laws of 
Nature were against us.” Now it is still a disputed point 
whether a man possesses the power to manipulate anything 
in the nature of wings, so as to afford him support and pro- 
pulsion. The few experiments which have been made in 
this direction are not sufficiently authenticated for us to 
deduce any reliable data from them. 
Without wishing to dogmatise, and especially without 
laughing like the writer in the “ Quarterly Review ” before 
referred to, I hold, with the Duke of Argyll, the opinion 
expressed in his own words when occupying the chair at one 
of our meetings : — “ I think it quite certain that if the air is 
ever to be navigated it will not be by individual men flying ; 
but it is quite possible vessels may be invented which will 
carry a number of men, and the motive force of which will 
not be muscular adtion.” I limit the application of these 
words to the adtion of wings by man’s muscular efforts. I 
wish I could think that the late Sir Wm. Fairbairn had made 
the same reservation. 
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