REACTIVE LOCOMOTION. 
3 i 
To navigate the air, the firft thing in order is to be 
able to float in it. This can be done evidently in but 
one of two ways ; either we mu ft make ourfelves lighter 
or the air heavier. Making ourfelves lighter has been 
tried for a hundred years and failed every time. Nothing 
remains, therefore, for us to do but to make the air heavier, 
and as it is manifeftly impoftible to change the chemical 
conftituents or fpecific gravity of the atmofphere, we mu ft 
accomplifh the fame thing practically in another way. 
Given, the power to create a wind blowing at the rate 
of 884 miles an hour—and what couldn’t we lift and 
float! Hurricanes with a tenth of this power unroof 
houfes and pick up ploughs and people from off the face 
of the ground and tranfport them long diftances. Evi¬ 
dently we only need the power and machinery to 
create a wind-fulcrum in the air and control it to our 
liking, and we may travel where the condor foars, and 
the albatrofs fails, and the bald eagle nurtures its young 
in the clefts of the crags! 
But the wind-force mu ft be our own and independent 
of Nature. Aero-planes, and inclined planes, and twifted 
planes, are things for the winds of the firmament to 
difport themfelves with, and hurl into fragments and ruin. 
Man may not be the plaything of the tempefts. He muft 
be the mafter of a tempeft of his own,—that he can carry 
with him and about him, and, as it were, enwrap himfelf 
withal as with a vefture and a garment,—and, panoplied 
