My labours during the past year have been chiefly brain work, and, as the subject of this Paper has occupied very much of my attention, I thought that a few remarks thereupon would prove interesting to the Members present.

I Wish to protest against the ever-recurring project of the sustentation of so-called aerial machines, by the employment of gas contained in any form of envelope, stiffened, strutted, or spherical. The mind, which enters freshly into the study of aerial navigation pure and simple, often confounded by the inability to rise from the earth, naturally suggests the aid of gas to take off the weight of the apparatus. This, however, would be a combination quite destructive of flight. The flying machine, if ever one worthy of the name be constructed, will be some apparatus of two dimensions, and will consequently be dwarfed by any auxiliary aid of cubical dimensions, such asa balloon, or any apparatus of the nature of a balloon, whatever be its shape.

“Among the problems with which science has not as yet succeeded in dealing satisfactorily is that of the flight of birds,and especially the flight of those birds which float for long periods of time without any apparent movement of their wings. During my voyage from San Francisco to Honolulu (which latter place, by the way, I had not reached at the moment of writing to the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 2.20 p.m., April 17th, ship time—lat. about 26° 35' and long, about 145° west, so that Greenwich time is about midnight, April 17th), I have noted with much interest the flight of the birds—the sailors call them molly–hawks—which follow the ship apparently without ceasing, except for an occasional short rest on the water.

“The article on this subject by E. A. Proctor in the English Mechanic, p. 347, opens up a question in which I have long felt deep interest, and, as I live by the seaside, I have spent many hours in watching the wonderful power of flight with which sea-gulls are provided. The moat remarkable exemplification of this power is the apparent ease with which a bird will remain perfectly steady in the air in the teeth of a gale. Some birds, such as kestrels and humming birds, are enabled to retain a constant position in the air by short and rapid strokes of the wings, but, in the case of a sea-gull remaining steady against a strong wind, no motion of the wing is apparent. I have often with a telescope watched sea-gulls under these circumstances at a distance of 40 or 50 yards, but I have never been able to detect the slightest movement of the nature of a flap given by the wings, which remain quite rigid.