mere impetus acquired from the descent of the inclined plane; and this impetus carried the machine farther when the vanes were at rest, than when they were in motion — a fact which sufficiently demonstrates their inutility; and in the absence of the propelling, which was also the sustaining power, the whole fabric would necessarily descend.  This consideration led Sir George Cayley to think only of adapting a propeller to some machine having of itself an independent power of support — in a word, to a balloon; the idea, however, being novel, or original, with Sir George, only so far as regards the mode of its application to practice.  He exhibited a model of his invention at the Polytechnic Institution.  The propelling principle, or power, was here, also, applied to interrupted surfaces, or vanes, put in revolution.  These vanes were four in number, but were found entirely ineffectual in moving the balloon, or in aiding its ascending power.  The whole project was thus a complete failure.

“It was at this juncture that Mr. Monck Mason (whose voyage from Dover to Weilburg in the balloon, “Nassau,” occasioned so much excitement in 1837,) conceived the idea of employing the principle of the Archimedean screw for the purpose of propulsion through the air — rightly attributing the failure of Mr. Henson’s scheme, and of Sir George Cayley’s, to the interruption of surface in the independent vanes.  He made the first public experiment at Willis’s Rooms, but afterward removed his model to the Adelaide Gallery.

“Like Sir George Cayley’s balloon, his own was an ellipsoid.  Its length was thirteen feet six inches — height, six feet eight inches.  It contained about three hundred and twenty cubic feet of gas, which, if pure hydrogen, would support twenty-one pounds upon its first inflation, before the gas has time to deteriorate or escape.  The weight of the whole machine and apparatus was seventeen pounds — leaving about four pounds to spare.  Beneath the centre of the balloon, was a frame of light wood, about nine feet long, and rigged on to the balloon itself with a network in the customary manner.  From this framework was suspended a wicker basket or car.

“The screw consists of an axis of hollow brass tube, eighteen inches in length, through which, upon a semi-spiral inclined at fifteen degrees, pass a series of steel wire radii, two feet long, and thus projecting a foot on either side.  These radii are connected at the outer extremities by two bands of flattened wire — the whole in this manner forming the framework of the screw, which is completed by a covering of oiled silk cut into gores, and tightened so as to present a tolerably uniform surface.  At each end of its axis this screw is supported by pillars of hollow brass tube descending from the hoop.  In the lower ends of these tubes are holes in which the pivots of the axis revolve.  From the end of the axis which is next the car, proceeds a shaft