Dr. Graham Bell, with a cheery optimism very pleasant to
contemplate, has pointed out that the law I have just cited may be
evaded by not making a larger machine on the same model, but
changing the latter in a way tantamount to increasing the number
of small machines. This is quite true, and I wish it understood
that, in laying down the law I have cited, I limit it to two
machines of different sizes on the same model throughout. Quite
likely the most effective flying-machine would be one carried by a
vast number of little birds. The veracious chronicler who escaped
from a cloud of mosquitoes by crawling into an immense metal pot
and then amused himself by clinching the antennae of the insects
which bored through the pot until, to his horror, they became so
numerous as to fly off with the covering, was more scientific than
he supposed. Yes, a sufficient number of humming-birds, if we
could combine their forces, would carry an aerial excursion party
of human beings through the air. If the watch-maker can make a
machine which will fly through the room with a button, then, by
combining ten thousand such machines he may be able to carry a
man. But how shall the combined forces be applied?
The difficulties I have pointed out apply only to the flying-
machine properly so-called, and not to the dirigible balloon or
airship.
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