economical fallacy in my reasoning upon certain data which Ì find in every manual of science. But I have before my eyes, in our oblivion of sewage manure, in our neglect of 15,000,000 acres of waste but cultivable land in our islands; and, in a greater marvel still, the idleness-forced or willing-of a fearfully large fraction of our population, poor and rich; other undeniable examples of yet vaster resources lying undeveloped at our feet. So I must say my say, and if I am wrong shall be ready to be rebuked.

If, then, I am led by the exuberance of my matter or by vagrancy of thought to touch on other matters collaterally, or indirectly connected with my main subject, I must beg the reader to pardon the digression if it offends him, or to take it as something added to his bargain if it should please him. What I have here to offer is for the most part entirely original, if not altogether new, in application. Where it is not original I shall be careful to say so, and shall cite the authority from whom I borrow or quote. And where I have found in the course of reading, since the growth of my own conceptions, that any notion or device. coincident with my own has been thrown out or described before by any other writer, I have held it my duty (if in the former part of my book I have not already pointed it out) to make statement of the fact, with due reference to book and page. However, of the chief means on which I most rely for success, I have to my great surprise nowhere met with the smallest hint, in any of the writings on my subject that I have seen or heard of. Should I have failed in any case to assign to its real originator any piece of intellectual property of which he may be considered the owner by 'right of priority,' I must say that it has been from ignorance, and that the difficulty of finding all the required records must have deprived me here of the pleasure of making such acknowledgments. For a pleasure it is, indeed, to find that notwithstanding our absurd jealousies and competitions for wealth and fame, the mammons of the trader in art and of the trader in science, there is a law which binds us together as brothers in spite of ourselves in intellect, if not in feeling, so that it even seems to be impossible that any discovery or invention can be made by one man, that, if it has not been published or arrived at

before, is not about the same time revealed to some other person. Though, then, as I have said, all the chief devices which it is the object of the following pages to describe are original, I beg the reader to understand that I do not assert, for I do not believe, that any one of them are new. I believe that each and all of them, if they are worth anything, must have presented themselves to other minds besides my own, both before and simultaneously with their occurrence to myself. Others may not only have imagined, but have printed or spoken of the same combinations that I shall here suggest; if so, and I do not mention the fact, it will be unknown to me, not from want of enquiry, for I have read and listened to all I could find and hear upon the subject. Others again may have thought of these things, and may not have thought it their duty to publish or to mention them. the most likely case, and what I suppose to be the fact. If it be so, the only newness is that I have thought it worth while to print my thoughts; but there is not much novelty in such a circumstance as this.

This is

'The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.'

189

CHAPTER II.

THE SEVERAL MODES OF FLIGHT.

UNDER the general term 'Aerial Navigation by aid of buoyant gas,' I design to include the whole art and method of travelling through the air on this principle, on any scale of application. Now the manner of accomplishing this will depend to some extent on the complexity of the apparatus made use of. This admits of some differences, which are such that the mode of practice may be divided into several kinds or degrees. There are three manners of locomotion available to man, corresponding to the three dimensions of space, to the three orders of matter, solid, liquid, fluid, and to the three correlative orders of animal life, the earthy, the watery, the airy. Progression through the air may be likened in this respect to movement upon the land or upon the water. The varieties in each of these cases may be arranged in order according to the nature of the instruments employed, commencing with the simplest.

It is probable that the art of aquatic locomotion has gradually grown from its elementary condition up to the advanced state in which it is at the present day. With land-travelling the order of development has not been quite the same. The simplest sort of motion at the surface of the water is that of swimming, in which a man propels himself by the exercise of his own limbs, without the use of any seat or vessel for the reception of his person. It would scarcely be any complication of this easy method if he took to himself a log of light wood to assist his lungs in buoying him upon the liquid. Even the swimming-stockings, with their bird's-foot web, which have been lately tried, might have been 1 See page 130.

invented by an uncultivated islander. Perhaps they were, ages ago. The second step would be that of making a canoe, sitting in it, and propelling it by paddles, which would soon become converted into oars, working on a rowlock or thole-pin. A very untutored mind would soon discover the benefit of Association in this matter; and perhaps it would require a very clever and learned one to find a better illustration of this principle, which the old man taught his sons with the bundle of sticks. If Fourier had been an English islander instead of a Continental bagman, he would have taken an eight-oared racing-boat, instead of a phalanx, as his symbol of co-operative power. In the boat the resistance to its rapid progress is not at all increased, but diminished, by increasing its length, and but slightly increased by the additional weight of more rowers, which causes it to sink a little deeper into the water. While, on the other hand, every pair of arms that can be set to work will add with their whole power to the speed of the canoe. Wild men of the South Sea must soon have found out that they could go faster over the waves by joint efforts in one boat than they could each labouring by himself in a solitary skiff. This, then, was the third mode of water-travelling. The fourth step in the navigation of the waters was the substitution of the brute powers of nature for human strength: first wind, then horse, then steam. And here is the art in its present state; though as yet, perhaps, only on the threshold of this last stage.

Similarly on land, men walk, propel themselves by manual labour, each in his own velocipede, or by joint exertion in a wheel-carriage in which several can work the cranks at once. Again, they can be driven by machinery, of animal or of iron, on roads macadamised or of iron, or on no roads at all. In land locomotion we have done but little in the second and third modes of propulsion, and we have yet a good deal to learn in the last.

Now I wish to point out that aerial transit admits of four chief varieties in method, which are analogous respectively to the four sorts of motion upon the water. In this classification of them I take man as the centre of arrangement, considering the gas vessel and propellers as appendages to his person. I shall,

hereafter, have occasion to take them in a somewhat different order, treating the air-craft as itself an organic structure, of which the motive agent, which may, or may not, be man, is a special part.

The first mode of progression through the air is that of flying, in which a man, without any vehicle to hold his person, may propel himself by wings. In the mode of practice which I have undertaken to advocate, his condition will be analogous to that of a person floating with a log of wood or with corks in the water, and urging himself forward by his limbs with the aid of swimming-stockings. Next, he may row himself either alone or cooperatively. Lastly, he may get himself propelled by artificial power, with aid of appropriate machinery.1

Bishop Wilkins, I find, arranges the modes of flying under four separate heads, not, however, corresponding exactly with my divisions. He is really worth quoting.

'There are four several ways whereby this flying in the air hath been or may be attempted. Two of them by the strength of other things, and two of them by our own strength. 1. By spirits or angels. 2. By the help of fowls. 3. By wings fastened immediately to the body. 4. By a flying chariot.

Having discussed the first three methods, concerning the third of which I have cited his judgment in a former page,2 he thus treats the fourth, summing up in favour of the plan of human co-operation.

'But the fourth and last way seems unto me altogether as probable, and much more useful than any of the rest. And that is by a flying chariot, which may be so contrived as to carry a man within it; and though the strength of a spring might, perhaps, be serviceable for the motion of this engine, yet it were better to have it assisted by the labour of some intelligent mover,

1 These, however, are but analogies, not close resemblances, for the conditions of a body floating in the air are very different from those of one floating on the water. A closer relation will one day be established between aerial and aquatic locomotion, when men, having learned the true art of propulsion in the air, will apply its principles to kindred practice in submarine navigation.

2 See page 18, above.