The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which men shall fly along distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration to be.

Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.

If my impressions are correct, our educational planing mill cuts down all the knots of genius, and reduces the best of the men who go through it to much the same standard.

Aerial flight is one of that class of problems with which man will never be able to cope.

Though born in Nova Scotia, I am of almost pure New England descent.

Whenever a total eclipse of the sun was visible in an accessible region parties were sent out to observe it.

The reports of the eclipse parties not only described the scientific observations in great detail, but also the travels and experiences, and were sometimes marked by a piquancy not common in official documents.