This book was transcribed from scans of the original found at the Internet Archive. I have rotated some images. The caption for Figure 20 was illegible in the scanned pages so I used a description from a paragraph that referred to it. Of the first attempts of men to emulate the flight of birds, we have no knowledge, but one of the earliest, perhaps, is embodied in the myth of Icarus and Daedalus. Xerxes, it is said, possessed a throne which was drawn through the air by eagles. The Chinese have sometimes been given credit for the invention of the balloon, as they have for many other scientific discoveries. It is related that a balloon was sent up at Pekin in celebration of the ascension of t…
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