What can be done in this way must be accomplished on a larger scale. Lest this proposition be disputed, it will be sufficient to refer to a flying machine patented in Australia. It weighs alto gether nineteen pounds, and its back bone is a long copper cylinder two inches in diameter, filled with compressed air. The compressed air supplies power for a small engine weighing ten pounds, at the rear end of the cylinder, which works a fan propeller. To the backbone on either side is attached a great wing of light material, so that the whole resembles a big butterfly with two fans for a tail. This contrivance has been made to fly horizontally three hundred feet. Of course, it is only a beginning, but all the same here is the nearest approach to the practicable fly ing machine of the future thus far at tained.
A Dreadful Ordeal.
