AERONAUTICS. THE subject of artificial flight, notwithstanding the large share of attention bestowed upon it, has been particularly barren of results. This is the more to be regretted, as the interest which has been taken in it from early Greek and Roman times has been universal. The unsatisfactory state of the question is to be traced to a variety of causes, the most prominent of which are 1st, The extreme difficulty of the problem. 2d, The incapacity or theoretical tendencies of those who have devoted themselves to its elucidation. 3d, The great rapidity with which wings, especially insect wings, are made to vibrate, and the difficulty experienced in analysing their movements. 4th, The great weight of all flying things when compared with a corresponding volume of air. 5th, The discovery of the balloon, which has retarded the science of aërostation, by misleading men's minds and causing them to look for a solution of the problem by the aid of a machine lighter than the air, and which has no analogue in nature. Flight has been unusually unfortunate in its votaries. It has been cultivated, on the one hand, by profound thinkers, especially mathematicians, who have worked out innumerable theorems, but have never submitted them to the test of experiment; and on the other, by uneducated charlatans who, despising the abstractions of science, have made the most ridiculous attempts at a practical solution of the problem. Flight, as the matter stands at present, may be divided into two principal varieties which represent two great sects or schools-.. |