In Mr. Darwin’s “Voyage of the Beagle” I find:-- “When the condors are wheeling in a flock round and round any spot their flight is beautiful. Except when rising from the ground, I do not remember ever having seen one of these birds flap its wings. Near Lima I watched several for nearly half an hour, without taking off my eyes; they moved in large curves, sweeping in circles, descending and ascending without giving a single flap. As they glided close over my head I intently watched from an oblique position, the outlines of the separate and great terminal feathers of each wing, and these separate feathers, if there had been the least vibratory movement, would have appeared as if blended together; but they were seen distinct against the blue sky.” Man is essentially a land animal, and it is quite possible if Nature had not placed before him numerous examples of birds and insects that are able to fly, he would never have thought of attempting it himself. But birds are very much in evidence, and mankind from the very earliest times has not only admired the ease and rapidity with which they are able to move from place to place, but has always aspired to imitate them. The number of attempts that have been made to solve this problem has been very great; but it was not until quite recently that science and mechanics had advanced far enough to put in the hands of experimenters suitable material to attack the problem. Perhaps nothing better has ever been written regarding our aspirations to imitate the flight of birds than what Prof. Langley has said:-- “Nature has made her flying machine in the bird, which is nearly a thousand times as heavy as the air its bulk displaces, and only those who have tried to rival it know how inimitable her work is, for ‘the way of a bird in the air’ remains as wonderful to us as it was to Solomon, and the sight of the bird has constantly held this wonder before men’s eyes, and in some men’s minds, and kept the flame of hope from utter extinction, in spite of long disappointment. I well remember how, as a child, when lying in a New England pasture, I watched a hawk soaring far up in the blue, and sailing for a long time without any motion of its wings, as though it needed no work to sustain it, but was kept up there by some miracle. But, however sustained, I saw it sweep, in a few seconds of its leisurely flight, over a distance that to me was encumbered with every sort of obstacle, which did not exist for it. The wall over which I had climbed when I left the road, the ravine I had crossed, the patch of undergrowth through which I had pushed my way--all these were nothing to the bird--and while the road had only taken me in one direction, the bird’s level highway led everywhere, and opened the way into every nook and corner of the landscape. How wonderfully easy, too, was its flight. There was not a flutter of its pinions as it swept over the field, in a motion which seemed as effortless as that of its shadow.”