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Galien adds that in the region of hail there was in the air a separation into two layers, the weights of which respectively are as 1 to 2. "Then," says he, "in placing an air-boat in the region of hail, with its sides rising eighty-three fathoms into the upper region, which is much more light, one could sail perfectly." But how to get this enormous air-boat up to the region of hail?
If one went high enough, said Galien, the air would be two thousand times as light as water, and it would be possible to construct an airship, with this light air as lifting factor, which should be as large as the town of Avignon, and carry four million passengers with their baggage.
But when we are subjected wholly to a single force, and have no point of support by the use of which to turn that force to our own purposes, as is the case with the aeronaut, we are entirely at the mercy of that force, and must obey it. Galien describes his air-boat, in 1755, in his little work entitled, "The Art of Sailing in the Air."
How this high air was to be obtained is matter for conjecture Galien seems to have thought in a vicious circle, in which the vessel that must rise to obtain the light air must first be filled with it in order to rise.
Cotsbody, said Panurge, then I am free; for I have been as far as the hole of Gibraltar, reached unto the outmost bounds of Hercules, and gathered of the ripest. Ogier the Dane was a furbisher of armour. The King Tigranes, a mender of thatched houses. Galien Restored, a taker of moldwarps. The four sons of Aymon were all toothdrawers. Pope Calixtus was a barber of a woman's sine qua non.
In sharp competition with the aspiring souls who sought to fly with wings the forerunners of the airplane devotees of to-day were those who tried to find some direct lifting device for a car which should contain the aviators. Some of their ideas were curiously logical and at the same time comic. There was, for example, a priest, Le Père Galien of Avignon.
No; it is to gratify her own petty scheme of vengeance that she has stolen a march on me; but she will not succeed. I will get on her track and wrest the girl from her hands." A minute later Professor Ruggles stood before the conductor. "When does the next train pass going west?" "It passes Galien in an hour." "Galien? Do you stop there?" "Yes." "Soon?" "Within five minutes."
Perhaps the grandest of all the fanciful ideas that have been promulgated on this subject was that of Galien, a Dominican friar, who proposed to collect the fine diffused air of the higher regions, where hail is formed, above the summit of the loftiest mountains, and to enclose it in a cubical bag of enormous dimensions extending more than a mile every way!
His project was a most extraordinary one, and its boldness is only equalled by the seriousness of the narrative. According to him, the atmosphere is divided into two horizontal layers, the upper of which is much lighter than the lower. "But," says Galien, "a ship keeps its place in the water because it is full of air, and air is much lighter than water.
This is a minor detail, respecting which Galien is not clear. From the labours of Lana and Galien, with their impossible flying machines, the inventor of the balloon could derive no benefit whatever; nor is his fame to be in the least diminished because many had laboured in the same field before him.
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