“I know that many of our fathers have been rescued from the most imminent dangers amongst the barbarians of India by such inventions. These were cast into prison, and whilst they continued ignorant of any means of effecting their liberation, some one, more cunning than the rest, invented an extraordinary machine, and then threatened the barbarians, unless they liberated his companions, that they would behold in a short time some extraordinary portents, and experience the visible anger of the Gods. The barbarians laughed at the threat. He then had constructed a dragon of the most volatile paper, and in this he enclosed a mixture of sulphur, pitch, wax, and so artistically prepared all his materials, that, when ignited, it would illumine the machine, and exhibit the following legend in their vernacular idiom, _The Anger of God_. The body being formed and the ingredients prepared, he then affixed a long tail, and committed the machine to the heavens, and, favored by the wind, it soared aloft towards the clouds. The spectacle of the dragon so brilliantly lit was terrific. The barbarians, beholding the unusual motion of the apparition, were smitten with the greatest astonishment, and now, remembering the threatened anger of Deity and the words of the father, they were in fear of expiating the punishment he had prognosticated for them. Therefore, without delay, they threw open the gates, they suffered their prisoners to go forth in peace and enjoy their freedom. In the meantime the fire seized on the machine and set it in a blaze, and with an explosion, which was interpreted as an expiring declaration of satisfaction, it, apparently of its own accord, vanished from sight, as if it had accomplished its supernatural mission. Thus the fathers, through the apprehension which this natural manifestation inspired, obtained that which could not be purchased with a large amount of gold.” Perhaps the reader will permit another anecdote, not entirely for its scientific value, but because he may like to compare the attitude of people toward aërial navigation in the dark ages with the attitude of his neighbors at the opening of the twentieth century. In two histories by Jef le Ministre and De Colonia, of the town of Lyons, the following account is given: