Page:Wonderful Balloon Ascents, 1870.djvu/240

224 would have devoted a chapter to the numerous attempts made to steer balloons. We shall only say here that aerial navigation should be divided into two kinds—with balloons, and without balloons. In the first case, it is limited to the study of aerial currents, and to the art of rising to those currents which suit the direction of the voyage undertaken. The balloon is not the master of the atmosphere; on the contrary, it is its powerless slave. In the second case, the discovery of Montgolfier is useless; and the question is, to find out a new machine capable of flying in the air, and at the same time heavier than the air. Birds are, without doubt, the best models to study. But with what force shall we replace life? The air-boat of M. Pline seems to us one of the best ideas; but the working of it presents many difficulties. Let us find a motive power at once light and powerful (aluminium and electricity, for example), and we will have definitively conquered the empire of the air.