In the New York Engineering News, of Oct. 12, 1893, Mr. Wellington, in a very interesting article entitled “The Mechanics of Flight,” makes the following statement: “If the conclusions so far reached in this paper be accepted, it is obvious that they greatly simplify the problem of artificial flight by reducing to a minimum the demand for power, making it chiefly necessary for acquiring the first initial velocity. All attempts at aviation which include any motor for propulsion are, in my judgment, on wrong lines, and predestined to certain failure, since they not only neglect, but destroy, the action of the forces by which true flight may be and is attained. I will not go so far as to say that some (soaring) birds, in the exuberance of power, may not use the wings to accelerate, as they do to retard motion. I think they do, but only in an abnormal way; it is wholly unnecessary, and even destructive of all normal flight. The fish needs a propeller, because it has no gravity in water; the bird does not need it, because it has gravity, and in that gravity has the best and smoothest of all conceivable means of propulsion, if he can make the wind lift him uphill whenever he has slid far enough downhill. If so, man commits an absurdity when he flies in the face of nature and assumes a propelling force where none is needed or exists.” Later on in this article, I wish to describe an instrument, experiments with which can be made to answer for us the question as to whether or not a motor is needed; but just here further quotations should be given to show the trend of the best thought. Aeronautics (N.Y.) for January contains Professor Langley’s remarkable paper entitled “The Internal Work of the Wind.” The closing paragraph is as follows: “The final application of these principles to the art of aerodromics seems, then, to be, that while it is not likely that the perfected aerodrome (air-runner) will ever be able to dispense altogether with the ability to rely at intervals on some internal source of power, it will not be indispensable that this aerodrome of the future shall, in order to go any distance--even to circumnavigate the globe without alighting,--need to carry a weight of fuel which would enable it to perform this journey under conditions analogous to those of a steamship, but that the fuel and weight need only be such as to enable it to take care of itself in exceptional moments of calm.” Mr. Octave Chanute, in his admirable chronicle entitled “Progress in Flying-Machines,” which will soon be published, says in one of his closing chapters: “But it is possible to utilize a still lighter power [than that of engines], for we have seen that the wind may be availed of under favorable circumstances, and that it will furnish an extraneous motor which costs nothing and imposes no weight upon the apparatus.