REACTIVE LOCOMOTION. 
43 
a gentleman remarked in my hearing that it was his belief 
that the flotation of birds in the air was due to an elec¬ 
trical aura , generated by the bird at will, producing a 
repulfion between the floating bird and the earth. And 
Profeflbr Page, a diftinguifhed American electrician and 
inventor, of Wafhington, D.C. (now deceafed), once de- 
fcribed to me the floating of a large bar of iron, weighing 
feveral hundred pounds, within the helix of his great 
battery, the profeflbr laughingly remarking that it was like 
Mahomet’s coffin, fufpended between heaven and earth. 1 
Bat I do not believe we Aiall be driven to this. My faith 
in the dragon-fly is ftrong. The locomotion of every flying 
creature is, I am perfuaded, purely mechanical; and the 
man who firfl conftruCts a dragon-fly navigator of the air 
will beflow upon mankind the long-coveted u fefame ”— 
the magic key to all the treafure-caverns of the fky! and, 
I was about adding, will be blefled by all mankind. But 
when I think of earth’s benefactors, and what has hap¬ 
pened to them all, or nearly all, I forbear. I forbear alfo 
as I think of what may happen to us when this amazing 
faculty fhall become the property and pofleflion of human 
devils ! Think of floating devils in the air ! Floating 
here and floating there; always floating; everywhere ! 
filling mortals with defpair! Crawling devils on the 
1 Query ? May not cyclones or whirlwinds be electrical helices 3 capable of 
being rendered harmlefs by means analogous to Franklin’s method of taming 
the lightnings ? 
