Such strength a man has never possessed, or can ever hope to; but even as it is, by long practice and great effort, men have succeeded at different times, not exactly in flying, but in helping themselves along considerably by means of wings. A man is said to have flown in this way in Rome in the days of Nero. A monk in the Middle Ages, named Elmerus, it is stated, flew about a furlong from the top of a tower in Spain, another from St. Mark’s steeple in Venice, and another from Nuremburg. But the most successful attempt ever made in this direction was accomplished about 200 years ago by a French locksmith of the name of Besnier. He had made for himself a pair of light wooden oars, shaped like the double paddle of a canoe, with cup-like blades at either end. These he placed over his shoulders, and attached also to his feet, and then casting himself off from some high place, and violently working his arms and legs so as to buffet the air downwards with his paddles, he was able to raise himself by short stages from one height to another, or skim lightly over a field or river. It is said that subsequently Besnier sold his oars to a mountebank, who performed most successfully with them at fairs and festivals. [Illustration: BESNIER AND HIS OARS.] But it was soon clear that the art of human flight was not to be achieved by such means; and when men found that they were unable to soar upwards by their own bodily strength alone, they set about devising some apparatus or machine which should carry them aloft. Many ancient philosophers bent their minds to the inventing of a machine for this purpose. One suggested that strong flying birds, such as eagles or vultures, might be harnessed to a car, and trained to carry it into the sky. Another gravely proposed the employment of “a little imp”--for in those days the existence of imps and demons was most firmly believed in. A third even went so far as to give an actual _recipe_ for flying, declaring that “if the eggs of the larger description of swans, or leather balls stitched with fine thongs, be filled with nitre, the purest sulphur, quicksilver, or kindred materials which rarefy by their caloric energy, and if they externally resemble pigeons, they will easily be mistaken for flying animals.” (!)