mosphere, sails will be
useless, and steering, or giving direction, impossible.

It was believed, in those early times, when scientific knowledge was
slender, that the dew which falls during the night is of celestial
origin, shed by the stars, and drawn by the sun, in the heat of the day,
back to its native skies. Many people even went the length of asserting
that an egg, filled with the morning dew, would, as the day advanced,
rise spontaneously into the air. Indeed one man, named Father Laurus,
speaks of this as an observed fact, and gravely gives directions how it
is to be accomplished. "Take," says he, "a goose's egg, and having
filled it with dew gathered fresh in the morning, expose it to the sun
during the hottest part of the day, and it will ascend and rest
suspended for a few moments." Father Laurus must surely have omitted to
add that a goose's brains in the head of the operator was an element
essential to the success of the experiment!

But this man, although very ignorant in regard to the nature of the
substances, with which he wrought, had some quaint notions in his head.
He thought, for instance, that if he were to cram the cavity of an
artificial dove with highly condensed air, the imprisoned fluid would
impel the machine in the same manner as wind impels a sail. If this
should not be found to act effectively, he proposed to apply fire to it
in some way or other, and, to prevent the machine from being spirited
away altogether by that volatile element, asbestos, or some
incombustible material, was to be used as a lining. To feed and support
this fire steadily, he suggested a compound of butter, salts, and
orpiment, lodged in metallic tubes, which, he imagined, would at the
same time heighten the whole effect by emitting a variety of musical
tones like an organ!

Another man, still more sanguine than the lest in his aerial flights of
fancy, proposed that an ascent should be attempted by the application of
fire as in a rocket to an aerial machine. We are not, however, told
that this daring spirit ever ventured to try thus to invade the sky.

There can be no doubt that much ingenuity, as well as absurdity, has
been displayed in the various suggestions that have been made from time
to time, and occasionally carried into practice. One man went the
length of describing a huge apparatus, consisting of very long tin
pipes, in which air was to be compressed by the vehement action of fire
below. In a bo