Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/13

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FLYING-MACHINES.
5

Charles V at his public entry into Nuremberg. But, if this is true, the dove must have survived its inventor for at least twenty years. Then we are told of a monk who attempted a flight with wings from the top of a tower in Spain. He broke his legs, and was afterward burned as a sorcerer. Another similar trial was made from St. Mark's steeple in Venice; another in Nuremberg; and so on—legs or arms were usually

Fig. 1.—The Flying Man (Rétif de la Bretonne's idea). (From an old number of "Scribner's Magazine.")

broken, occasionally a neck. In the sixteenth century we read of a certain Italian who went to the court of James IV of Scotland, and attempted to fly from the walls of Stirling Castle to France. His thigh was broken; but, as a reason for the failure, he asserted that some of the feathers used in constructing his wings were from barn-yard fowls, with a natural affinity for the dung-hill; whereas, if com-