Aeroplanes

THE "SCIENCE" OF AVIATION.-It may be doubted whether there is such a thing as a "science of aviation." Since Langley, on May 6, 1896, flew a motor-propelled tandem monoplane for a minute and an half, without a pilot, and the Wright Brothers in 1903 succeeded in flying a bi-plane with a pilot aboard, the universal opinion has been, that flying machines, to be successful, must follow the structural form of birds, and that shape has everything to do with flying. We may be able to learn something by carefully examining the different views presented by those interested in the art, and then see how they conform to the facts as brought out by the actual experiments.