should be tested, first with models, and then with full-sized
machines; designers, he said, should make a point of practice in
order to make sure of the action, to proportion and adjust the
parts of their machine, and to eliminate hidden defects.
Experimental flight, he suggested, should be tried over water,
in order to break any accidental fall; when a series of
experiments had proved the stability of a glider, it would then
be time to apply motive power. He admitted that such a process
would be both costly and slow, but, he said, that 'it greatly
diminished the chance of those accidents which bring a whole
line of investigation into contempt.' He saw the flying machine
as what it has, in fact, been; a child of evolution, carried on
step by step by one investigator after another, through the
stages of doubt and perplexity which lie behind the realm of
possibility, beyond which is the present day stage of actual
performance and promise of ultimate success and triumph over the
earlier, more cumbrous, and slower forms of the transport that
we know.

Chanute's monograph, from which the foregoing notes have been
comprised, was written soon after the conclusion of his series
of experiments. He does not appear to have gone in for further
practical work, but to have studied the subject from a
theoretical view-point and with great attention to the work done
by others. In a paper contributed in 1900 to the American
Independent, he remarks that 'Flying machines promise better
results as to speed, but yet will be of limited commercial
application. They may carry mails and reach other inaccessible
places, but they cannot compete with railroads as carriers of
passengers or freight. They will not fill the heavens with