Cayley was a man in advance of his time, in many ways. Of independent means, he made the grand tour which was considered necessary to the education of every young man of position, and during this excursion he was more engaged in studies of a semi-scientific character than in the pursuits that normally filled such a period. His various writings prove that throughout his life aeronautics was the foremost subject in his mind; the Mechanic's Magazine, Nicholson's Journal, the Philosophical Magazine, and other periodicals of like nature bear witness to Cayley's continued research into the subject of flight. He approached the subject after the manner of the trained scientist, analysing the mechanical properties of air under chemical and physical action. Then he set to work to ascertain the power necessary for aerial flight, and was one of the first to enunciate the fallacy of the hopes of successful flight by means of the steam engine of those days, owing to the fact that it was impossible to obtain a given power with a given weight.