6 
A PREFACE AND AN APOLOGY. 
clafs of remarkable people in our world who underhand 
the whole mechanifm of material nature, and the fpiritual 
or effluent laws of the univerfe fo much better than their 
more ignorant and to-be-pitied fellow-creatures do. 
During my rehdence in the old city by the fea, as I 
have faid, I hudied the birds carefully. Bats alfo in¬ 
terested me, and there were plenty of them there. Of 
infers, however, I took no notice, except as to butterflies, 
on account of their large and how-moving wings, which 
could be eafily watched; for what could creatures with 
comparatively no weight at all teach in refpedt to a problem 
the very gih of which relates wholly to weight! for the 
problem of aerial navigation is the problem of a hying man : 
a hying horfe : a hying elephant: a hying mass : a ton, or 
tons of matter going through the air: and the largeh 
birds we know of, or can imagine, the roc of fable, and 
the winged dragons of hory, come neareh as exemplars 
of the kind of hying and hying creatures we need to 
conhder in order to difcover the wonderful fecret of 
locomotion through the air. Evidently in fuch a held 
the infedt world with its pith-like bodies has no handing. 
Of courfe I did not hudy infeSls. 
But in the daily rambles I was accuhomed to take 
around the ruined ramparts of the old hihoric city, one 
creature of the infed world hngled me out for his at¬ 
tentions, and, in a fenfe, became my companion for years, 
following me from city to city, and from continent to 
