With these feelings, we have thought it consistent with our duty as
journalists, not to refuse publicity to an account of what was till
lately doing in Paris to forward practical aerostation--we say,
lately; for we are told by our correspondent, that the operations
towards perfecting the invention have been stopped by orders of the
French government, from an opinion that, if air-travelling were
introduced, it would be injurious to the custom-house, and
denationalise the country. This resolution of the French government is
to be regretted, not less on the score of science, than from the ruin
it has inflicted on the modest means of the ingenious operator. With
these preliminary explanations, we offer the following paper, just as
handed to us by a respectable party conversant with the details to
which he refers.
'The chief difficulty in aero-locomotion, is that of steering; because
the atmosphere seems to present no substantial fulcrum which can be
pushed against. But that this difficulty is not altogether
insurmountable, is evident from the single fact, that birds really do
steer their way through the air.
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