Abstract
IN the Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain for March 1867, Dr. J. Bell Pettigrew, F.R.S., the distinguished curator of the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, announced the startling discovery that all wings whatever—those of the insect, bat, or bird—were twisted upon themselves structurally, and that they twisted and untwisted during their action—that in short they formed mobile helices or screws. In June of the same year (1867), Dr. Pettigrew, following up his admirable. researches, read an elaborate memoir “On the Mechanism of Flight” before the Linnean Society of London, wherein he conclusively proves, by a large number of dissections and experiments, in which he greatly excels, that not only is the wing a screw structurally and physiologically, but further that it is a reciprocating screw. He shows, in fact, that the wing, during its oscillations, describes a figure of 8 track similar in some respects to those described by an oar in sculling. This holds true of the vibrating wing of the insect, bat, and bird, when the bodies of these animals are artificially fixed.
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Flight.—Figure of 8 Wave Theory of Wing Movements. Nature 2, 166 (1870). https://doi.org/10.1038/002166a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/002166a0