e
in all ages; it is naturally suggested by the flight of a bird. I have
watched for hours together in early life, in my walks across the bridge
from Boston to Charlestown, the motions of the sea-gulls.... Often have I
attempted to unravel the mystery of their motion so as to bring the
principle of it to bear upon this very subject, but I never experimented
upon it. Many ingenious men, however, have experimented on air
navigation, and have so far succeeded as to travel in the air many miles,
but always with the current of wind in their favor. By _navigating_ the
atmosphere is meant something more than dropping down with the tide in a
boat, without sails, or oars or other means of propulsion.... Birds not
only rise in the air, but they can also propel themselves against the
ordinary currents. A study, then, of the conditions that enable a bird
thus to defy the ordinary currents of the atmosphere seems to furnish the
most likely mode of solving the problem. Whilst a bird flies, whilst I
see a mass of matter overcoming, by its structure and a power within it,
the natural forces of gravitation and a current of air, I dare not say
that air navigation is absurd or impossible.

"I consider the difficulties to be overcome are the combining of strength
with lightness in the machine sufficient to allow of the exercise of a
force without the machine from a source of power within. A difficulty
will occur in the right adaptation of propellers, and, should this
difficulty be overcome, the risks of derangement of the machinery from
the necessary lightness of its parts would be great, and consequently the
risks to life would be greater than in any other mode of travelling. From
a wreck at sea or on shore a man may be rescued with his life, and so by
the running off the track by the railroad car, the majority of passengers
will be saved; but from a fall some thousands, or only hundreds, of feet
through the air, not one would escape death....

"I have no time to add more than my best wishes for the success of those
who are struggling with these difficulties."

These observations, made nearly sixty-five years ago, are most pertinent
to present-day conditions, when the conquest of the air has been
accomplished, and along the very lines suggested by Morse, but at what a
terrible cost in human life.

That the inventor, harassed on all sides by pirates, unscrupulous men,
and false friends, should, in spite of his Christian philosophy, have