• In the disoussion on the airship of M. Santos-Dumont,
a curious fact has come out. Another Brazilian, Bartholomeo de GTISMiL11, who had been educated by the Jesuits of Paraguay, constructed an aerial machine in 1709, in which he " flew " from church tower to church tower in Lisbon. The descriptions of the machine are hopelessly vague, but we take it it was a kind of parachute which enabled hita to leap safely from a high point on to a lower one. The Inquisition naturally arrested him, nominally as a magician, really as a man of science, and probably, therefore, an unbeliever, and though he was rescued by the Jesuit fathers, he died of chagrin and disappointment. M. Santos-Dumont will not die that way, but courage, however superb, will not alter the laws of gravitation, any more than "fanaticism "will stop a bullet. The real hope for an aeronaut is that a bird can fly, but even a bird cannot remain passive in the air. The albatross, which has the best chance of doing it, from the marvellous size of its wings, sleeps on the water.
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