IX.—THE KITE.

Every one is undoubtedly acquainted with the exceedingly simple mechanism—invented when boys commenced to exist—for the enjoyment of one of the most pleasant pastimes—kite flying. It is indulged in mostly during the fall, and, perhaps, a trifle more so in the rural districts than in the cities, because of the greater freedom of room which stubble fields and meadows allow.

But attention has also been given to the employment of this kind of ærostation as a means of support and conveyance; and kites have been made as much as thirty feet high, looking more like buoyant sails than boyish playthings, and exerting an immense power of waftage. Loaded wagons have been drawn over turnpikes; persons have frequently been carried up in the air by huge kites; and, in some parts of Europe, experiments have been made to signal and save shipwrecked people on dangerous coasts, proving sufficiently that the kite can be made, even in its present primitive state, to be quite useful.

In this connection it may "not be amiss" to state that the first person known to have ascended—some eighty years ago, as the "History of Kite Carriage" informs us, "was a Miss"—a young lady of some one hundred and twenty-six pounds, avoirdupois. She was seated in a chair underneath the gigantic structure which weighed nearly thirty pounds, had a surface of about sixty square feet, and rose most majestically to a hight of six hundred feet—an incontrovertible instance of the superior courage of the gentler sex over man.

The kite is maintained in the air by two opposing forces: the impelling power of the wind—lifting it by striking against it at an angle, and the restraining powers of the string—motive-force and gravitation combined; so that in the kite, above all, we possess in a crude form, the three principles requisite for artificial flight: the plain, weight and propelling force. By improving upon the kite, therefore, we will arrive at the practical solution of the problem of artificial flight.