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Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5370, 4 January 1929, Page 1

Sir Hubert Wilkins, who. is now exploring the Great White South (says a writer in the “Dominion”), inherits his pioneering spirit and scientific mind from an ancestor, John Wilkins, who, in the seventeenth century, was Bishon of Chester, and! one ■of the founders of the Royal Society, of which body he was first secretary. In 1648 he published a book, to which he gave the thrilling title of. “Mathematical Magick.” In this, work he devoted three to flying, detailing all .that had bepn done in that line of investigation, with copious of references to authorities, in just ,the same way as a modern scientist would set to work. The Bishop also divided; the possible methods of flying into four cate-| gories,: By Spirits of Angels (Simon ■Magus) ; with the help of fowls (Gonsales’s fictional “ganzas”) ; by wings fastened immediately to ithe body (the monk Elmer) ; and by a flying chariot (Archytaw and Regiomontanus), which he considered to bq the most fruitful of suacess--a prophecy which has come true. At the s.ame time two other. Englishmen, who have left ithqjr names in the world of physics, Boyle and Hooke, were making experiments to determine the various, properties of air, and thus were- forming an important link in the chain of scientific lata which, led to the balloon.