vertically on each side of the car for that purpose, or perhaps merely by the man inclining the weight of his body to one side.’ Having stated how the thing is to be done, Walker is careful to explain that when it is done there will be in it some practical use, notably in respect of the conveyance of mails and newspapers, or the saving of life at sea, or for exploration, etc. It might even reduce the number of horses kept by man for his use, by means of which a large amount of land might be set free for the growth of food for human consumption. At the end of his work Walker admits the idea of steam power for driving a flying machine in place of simple human exertion, but he, like Cayley, saw a drawback to this in the weight of the necessary engine. On the whole, he concluded, navigation of the air by means of engine power would be mostly confined to the construction of navigable balloons. As already noted, Walker’s work is not over practical, and the foregoing extract includes the most practical part of it; the rest is a series of dissertations on bird flight, in which, evidently, the portrait painter’s observations were far less thorough than those of da Vinci or Borelli. Taken on the whole, Walker was a man with a hobby; he devoted to it much time and thought, but it remained a hobby, nevertheless. His observations have proved useful enough to give him a place among the early students of flight, but a great drawback to his work is the lack of practical experiment, by means of which alone real advance could be made; for, as Cayley admitted, theory and practice are very widely separated in the study of aviation, and the whole history of flight is a matter of unexpected results arising from scarcely foreseen causes, together with experiment as patient as daring. IV THE MIDDLE NINETEENTH CENTURY