commerce, abolish custom houses, or revolutionise the world, for
they will be expensive for the loads which they can carry, and
subject to too many weather contingencies. Success is, however,
probable. Each experimenter has added something to previous
knowledge which his successors can avail of. It now seems
likely that two forms of flying machines, a sporting type and an
exploration type, will be gradually evolved within one or two
generations, but the evolution will be costly and slow, and must
be carried on by well-equipped and thoroughly informed
scientific men; for the casual inventor, who relies upon one or
two happy inspirations, will have no chance of success
whatever.'

Follows Professor John J. Montgomery, who, in the true American
spirit, describes his own experiments so well that nobody can
possibly do it better. His account of his work was given first
of all in the American Journal, Aeronautics, in January, 1909,
and thence transcribed in the English paper of the same name in
May, 1910, and that account is here copied word for word. It
may, however, be noted first that as far back as 1860, when
Montgomery was only a boy, he was attracted to the study of
aeronautical problems, and in 1883 he built his first machine,
which was of the flapping-wing ornithopter type, and which
showed its designer, with only one experiment, that he must
design some other form of machine if he wished to attain to a
successful flight. Chanute details how, in 1884 and 1885
Montgomery built three gliders, demonstrating the value of
curved surfaces. With the first of these gliders Montgomery
copied the wing of a seagull; with the second he proved that a
flat surface was virtually useless, and with the third he