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Animal Locomotion; or, walking, swimming, and flying / With a dissertation on aëronautics cover

Animal Locomotion; or, walking, swimming, and flying / With a dissertation on aëronautics

Chapter 2: PREFACE.
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About This Book

The book analyzes mechanical principles governing walking, swimming, and flying, linking anatomy, muscle action, lever mechanics, and fluid resistance to explain animal movement. It distinguishes passive structures—bones, joints, ligaments—and active elements—muscular cycles, spiral fiber arrangements—and describes recurring figure-of-8 and helical trajectories traced by limbs, tails, fins, and wings. Comparative chapters relate terrestrial, aquatic, and aerial progression through centres of gravity, types of levers, and wave-like muscular propagation. The work also discusses artificial analogues and aeronautical implications and supports its arguments with many diagrams, experimental observations, and a concise history of prior theories.

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Title: Animal Locomotion; or, walking, swimming, and flying

Author: James Bell Pettigrew

Release date: January 25, 2018 [eBook #56427]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Thiers Halliwell, Chris Curnow and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)

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Henry S. King & Co. 65 Cornhill, and 12 Paternoster Row.

C. BerjeauW. Ballingall

Walking, Swimming, and Flying.

ANIMAL LOCOMOTION OR WALKING, SWIMMING, AND FLYING, WITH A DISSERTATION ON AËRONAUTICS.

BY
J. BELL PETTIGREW, M.D. F.R.S. F.R.S.E. F.R.C.P.E.
PATHOLOGIST TO THE ROYAL INFIRMARY OF EDINBURGH; CURATOR OF THE MUSEUM OF THE
ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS OF EDINBURGH;
Extraordinary Member and late President of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh; Croonian Lecturer
to the Royal Society of London for 1860; Lecturer to the Royal Institution of Great Britain and
Russell Institution, 1867; Lecturer to the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh,
1872; Author of numerous Memoirs on Physiological Subjects in the
Philosophical and other Transactions, etc. etc. etc.
ILLUSTRATED BY 130 ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD.
Henry S. King & Co.
65 Cornhill, and 12 Paternoster Row, London.
1873.

(All Rights reserved.)

PREFACE.

In the present volume I have endeavoured to explain, in simple language, some difficult problems in “Animal Mechanics.” In order to avoid elaborate descriptions, I have introduced a large number of original Drawings and Diagrams, copied for the most part from my Papers and Memoirs “On Flight,” and other forms of “Animal Progression.” I have drawn from the same sources many of the facts to be found in the present work. My best thanks are due to Mr. W. Ballingall, of Edinburgh, for the highly artistic and effective manner in which he has engraved the several subjects. The figures, I am happy to state, have in no way deteriorated in his hands.

Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh,
July 1873.