the sky, and reflecting on that problem which to this day
fairly puzzles our ablest scientists, settling the matter in a
sentence: "The cause is that feathers doe possess upward
attractions." During four hundred years preceding Lord Verulam
philosophers would have flown by aid of a broomstick. Bacon
himself would have merely parried the problem with a platitude!

At any rate, physicists, even in the brilliant seventeenth
century, made no material progress towards the navigation of
the air, and thus presently let the simple mechanic step in
before them. Ere that century had closed something in the
nature of flight had been accomplished. It is exceedingly hard
to arrive at actual fact, but it seems pretty clear that more
than one individual, by starting from some eminence, could let
himself fall into space and waft himself away for some distance
with fair success and safety, It is stated that an English
Monk, Elmerus, flew the space of a furlong from a tower in
Spain, a feat of the same kind having been accomplished by
another adventurer from the top of St. Mark's at Venice.

In these attempts it would seem that the principle of the
parachute was to some extent at least brought into play. If
also circumstantial accounts can be credited, it would appear
that a working model of a flying machine was publicly exhibited
by one John Muller before the Emperor Charles V. at Nuremberg.
Whatever exaggeration or embellishment history may be guilty of
it is pretty clear that some genuine attempts of a practical
and not unsuccessful nature had been made here and there, and
these prompted the flowery and visionary Bishop Wilkins already
quoted to predict confidently that the day was approaching when