REACTIVE LOCOMOTION. 
33 
Mankind mult for-ever difmifs the thought of “wings,” 
or they will never navigate the air. 
Flying is therefore an impoflibility. 
But locomotion through the air is poflible. 
Many manufacturers in the United States are now 
turning fan-blowers to account by employing the fuCtion- 
power of the machine to free their fhops from the duff 
and debris incident to their work; fhavings and fawduft 
as well as other dull riling up from the floors and 
benches like flying creatures, and directing their ways 
ftraight for the fuCtion canopy and pipe, up through which 
they difappear. I was told by a friend that the fuCtion of 
the fan-blower at his works was ftrong enough a to lift a 
man’s hat right off* his head : ” and he mentioned the faCt 
that one of his men in walking under the canopy had his 
hat lifted from his head and carried up the pipe. The 
incident to me has a peculiar flgnificance from the con¬ 
nection it fuggefts between fan-blowers and infeCt loco¬ 
motion in the air. The bufy bee is a fan-blower, and the 
creatures, as is well known, ventilate their hives by the 
play of their wings : the bees afligned to this duty placing 
themfelves in the paflages and at the entrances to the 
hive, and by the play of their wings, as in flying, creating 
a perfeCt draught. 
The moderate wind moving at the rate of feven miles 
an hour, and the ftorm moving at thirty-lix miles an hour, 
and the hurricane moving at eighty miles an hour—are all 
