. The bird . idance, he proclaimed aloud that atlength he had secured his pinions, had eluded nature, and conqueredgravitatiorL Cruel and tragical catastrophes gave the lie to thisambition. He studied the economy of the birds wing, he undertookto imitate it; rudely enough he counterfeited its inimitable saw with terror, from a column of a hundred feet high, a pocrhuman bird, armed with huge wings, dart into air, wrestle with it,and dash headlong into atom^. The gloomy and fatal machine, in its laborious complexity, was asorry imitation of that admirable arm (far superior to the hu
. The bird . idance, he proclaimed aloud that atlength he had secured his pinions, had eluded nature, and conqueredgravitatiorL Cruel and tragical catastrophes gave the lie to thisambition. He studied the economy of the birds wing, he undertookto imitate it; rudely enough he counterfeited its inimitable saw with terror, from a column of a hundred feet high, a pocrhuman bird, armed with huge wings, dart into air, wrestle with it,and dash headlong into atom^. The gloomy and fatal machine, in its laborious complexity, was asorry imitation of that admirable arm (far superior to the humanarm), that system of muscles, which co-operate among themselves inso vigorous and lively a movement. Disjointed and relaxed, thehuman wing lacked especially that all-powerful muscle which connectsthe shoulder to the chest (the humerus to the sternum), and com-municates its impetus to the thunderous flight of the falcon. Theinstmment acts so directly on the mover, the oar oh the rower, and TRK WING. 65 = ^f. unites viitli liim so perfectly that the martinet, the frigatc-bivd, sweepsalong at the rate of eighty leagues an hour, five or six times swifterthan our most rapid railway trains, outstripping the hurricane, andwith no rival but the liffhtning. But even if our poor imitators had exactly imitated the wing, no-thing would have been accomplished. They, then, had copied the form,but not the internal ntructuro. They thought that the birds power ofascension lay in its flight alone, forgetting the secret auxiliaiy whichnature conceals in the plumage and the bones. The mystery, thetrue marvel lies in the faculty with which she endows the bird, of 86 JHE WUKi. rendering itself light or heavy at its will, of aduiitting more or less of air into its expressly constractedreservoirs. Would it stow light, itinflates its dimension, while dimin-ishing its relative weight; by thismeans it spontaneously ascends ina medium heavier than itself. Todescend or drop, it contracts itself,grows th
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Keywords: ., bookauthormich, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, booksubjectbirds
