heir motive power (springs) along with them.

Besides horizontal screws, it is proposed to furnish additional guiding
power to the locomotive by means of inclined planes. These, by being
arranged in various positions, while the machine is in motion, would act
on the air, as do the wings of a bird, and give it direction.

No doubt, despite the simplicity of all this, difficulties will present
themselves to most minds, some of which may perhaps bulk very large in
the minds of mechanicians--such as the power of materials to withstand
the violence of the forces, to which they are to be applied, etcetera.
We do not know; however, no difficulties seem to have afflicted Monsieur
Nadar, who thus grandly waives them all aside, and revels in the
contemplation of the triumphant flights that lie before him in the
future:--

"It will be understood," he writes, "that it belongs not to us to
determine at present either the mechanism or the necessary manoeuvres.
Neither shall we attempt to fix even approximately the future velocity
of the aerial locomotive. Let us rather attempt to calculate the
probable velocity of a locomotive gliding through the air, without the
possibility of running off the rails, without any oscillation, without
the least obstacle. Let us fancy such locomotive encountering on its
way, in the midst, one of those atmospheric currents which travel at the
rate of forty leagues an hour, and following that current; add together
these formidable data, and your imagination will recoil in adding still
further to these giddy velocities, that of a machine falling through an
angle of descent of from 12,000 to 15,000 feet in a series of gigantic
zigzags, and making the tour of the globe in a succession of fantastic
leaps."

Truly Monsieur Nadar seems to us to be right! There are few men or
women, we suspect, who would not recoil from such "fantastic leaps," and
unless the prospect of a more sedate style of travelling be held out, it
is not probable that aerial locomotives will receive much patronage from
the general public.

Lord Carlingford, who mistook the sentiments of Monsieur Nadar in regard
to the aerial locomotive, claimed for himself, in 1863, the honour of
having previously invented and successfully launched an aerial chariot,
weighing seventeen stone, which rose on the air without any assistance
but that of the wind, and, having arrived at a horizontal position on
the air, it remained stationary there until