But the ancients went farther than the mere conception of such efforts ; for we are told that they constructed ma chines in the figure of animals, which could actually fly. At the same time, it must be acknowledged, that this is rather reported from tradition, than described by specta tors, as the wooden pigeon of Archytas, which is alluded to by Aldus Genius, in these words, " Sed id quad ?rchy tam Pythagorennz commentunz esse atque feeisse traditur : neque minus admirabile neque tanzezz varium ague videri debct, vain ct plerique nobiliunz rcorunz et Favorinus philosophus memoriarunz s'eterwn essequentissimus affir malts bine scriPserunt, simulacrum columba e ligno ab .9rchyta, ratione quadani discifilinaque mcchanica factum vclasse ; ita erat scilicet libra,nentis suspensunz et aura spiritus znclusa atque occulta coneitum." 'Thus the ac count is less specific than could be desired of so singular a contrivance ; and, although it has been imitated by the moderns, there is the same defective explanation. After Charles V. resigned the crown, various expedients were invented to amuse his leisure hours ; among these was the mechanical flight of artificial sparrows, which being al lowed to escape from his apartment, performed various evolutions in the air. Before his demission, indeed, it is said that an ingenious mechanic constructed an eagle, which flew from Nuremberg to meet him, on his approach to that city : and the same mechanic is reported to have constructed an iron fly, which having left his hand, flew about, and at length, as if weary, returned to its master. Later mechanics have been content with representing the motions of birds on the earth, but not in flight ; though this is perhaps less difficult than may be supposed.
Bishop Wilkins considers, that " there are four several ways whereby this flying in the air bath 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 im mediately to the body ; 4. By a flying chariot." The first.
he rejects, as not being founded on natural and al tificial grounds, and the last we have seen realized in the modern invention of balloons ; the second has hardly ever been tried, though the extreme docility of animals might appa rently be an encouragement : but the third has excited re peated notice, and the ingenious have endeavoured to re duce it to practice.
The chief and principal obstacle has been found in that law of n hereby bodies of greater specific gravity than the fluids wherein they arc immersed sink in them ; but this proposition is liable to modification, partly resulting from the figure of the body and the motion of the fluid. Rural observers cannot fail to have remarked, that towards autumn the dandelion, a common plant, is covered with a downy substance, continually wafted away by the wind. In a calm it falls to the ground, but in a gen tle breeze, it rises high, and advances with steady progres sion in the air, until it escapes from our sight. On more minute inspection, this substance is discovered to repre sent a parachute in miniature : the head is feathery, and at the end of the stalk is a seed attached, of far greater spe cific gravity than the atmosphere. The real down also, we see floating around us, is of considerable speci fic gravity ; and it is singular, that it is not those birds most amply provided with it, nor those of the least speci fic gravity, that fly the greatest distances. If the feathery substance could be put in motion while the air is at rest, or if an analogous machine, very light, could strike the sur rounding atmosphere by any means that could be devised, its rise and progressive motion would be certain.
We read of attempts at artificial flying in various coun tries, and at different intervals, but we are left without in formation respecting the means employed: it has been conjectured, however, that most of these performances resembled the descent of mountebanks on ropes, from lofty places, secured by a ring or traveller, while the agitation of wings attached to their shoulders, broke the force of the fall. Such was the exploit of an Arragonese who, at the coronation of Edward VI. descended a rope compared to a ship's cable stretched from the battlements of St. Paul's steeple to the ground, " running on his breast as if it had been an arrow out of a bow." Of the like description
were the exhibitions of a juggler on a rope stretched from the top of St. Giles's steeple in Edinburgh, and fastened below the cross, in 1598. But these feets of address had frequently a fatal termination ; as that of another perform er from the battlements of St. Paul's in the reign of Mary ; and as happened at Shrewsbury in the year 1739, where one, who was no mountebank, having successfully per formed several tricks on a rope extended from the top of St. Mary's steeple, attempted to descend it across the liver, when it broke, and he was dashed to pieces by the fall. In the strange pageantry of old, exhibited in these kingdoms, and elsewhere, there are repeated allusions to angels, or divinities provided with wings, flying to meet sovereign princes on their triumphal entry into cities ; but the mode in which this was accomplished is not described.
During the darker ages, when the possibility of aerial franspoitation was ascribed to necromancers, Roger Ba con, a man of the most comprehensive genius, speaks of attaining it by wings attached to a machine. In his singu lar work, De Mirabili potestate Anis et Xature, he uses the following expressions. Possunt jieri instrunzenta vo landi, ut homo sedens in medio instrun:enti revolvens aliquod ingenium, per quod ale artificialiter composite aerem verbe rent ad modum avis volantis. That is, it is possible to make a flying machine, so that a man sitting in the middle, can, by some expedient, produce a rotatory motion, which shall occasion the percussion of artificial wings on the air like the flight of a bird ; and in another passage, he observes, " that a flying machine has undoubtedly been made in our own time, not that I saw it, nor did I know any one who had done so, but I am acquainted with an intelligent per son who has conceived such a contrivance." Though the passage is not void of obscutity, by combining it with the former, the author's meaning may be gained. Bacon lived in the thirteenth century. Not far from the same period, and in the succeeding centuries, we are told of a certain monk, •lmerns, who flew above a furlong from the top of a tower in Spain. Another flight was attempted from St Mark's steeple in Venice, and also at Nuremberg ; and by means of a pair of wings, a person named Dante of Perouse, was enabled to fly ; hut while amusing the city with his flight, he fell on the top of St Mary's church and broke his thigh. The subject of aerial navigation received still greater at tention in the seventeenth century, as the works of Lana, Hook, and Wilkins testify ; and contemporary with them, one Besnier, a locksmith of Sable in France, obtained con siderable effect from the aid of four wings. In the only imperfect description of them preserved, they seem to have been four rectangular surfaces, one at the end of each of two rods passing over the shoulders of him who used them, and the posterior two connected by a cord to his ancles. The inventor did not pretend that he could rise from the earth or sustain himself long in the air, from inability to give his apparatus the requisite power and rapidity ; but he progressively availed himself of its aid to leap from a win dow one story high, next from the second story, and then from a roof, whereby he passed over the neighbouring houses. By leaving an elevated position, he could cross a river of considerable breadth, or any similar obstacle. His first pair of wings were purchased by M. Baladin of Gui bre, who used them with success. This was recently pre ceding the year 1678 ; and in the beginning of the next century, Bartholomew Laurence de Guzman, a Portu guese, contrived some strange machine, partly formed with wings like a bird, of which scarcely any intelligible account has been transmitted to us. But while one set of mechanics and philosophers encouraged each other with the hopes of aerial navigation, Borelli, a Neapolitan ma thematician, declared that it was impossible for men to fly by their own strength,fieri non Jtotest ut hontines prof:rile viribus araficiose volare posaint ; and perhaps this has been one cause of more attentive investigation into the proper ties enabling birds to fly, or the methods which might be adopted by men.