machine to weather a gale depending so materially on the means employed to ensure its stability in the air, it is interesting to note that the wings of Latham's Antoinette monoplane can be warped to restore the equilibrium of the apparatus, whereas the Henry Farman biplane is provided with ailerons attached to the main bearing surfaces, to keep it on an even keel, and yet both those machines behave admirably in a very strong wind. The same may be said of the Voisin biplane, which depends on its hind cell and the vertical surfaces dividing the main planes into box-like compartments for its lateral stability. M. Clementel nevertheless believes that to render the lateral stability of the aeroplane complete it will be found advisable to use a gyroscope. He says such an apparatus, applicable to flying machines, has been invented by the French Military Aeronautic Corps at Chalais Meudon, but he does not divulge the secret of the machine. A gyroscope having sufficient power to maintain the stability of an aeroplane in the air would necessarily be very heavy. If it consisted in a comparatively light apparatus, destined to operate a mechanism for the warping of the wings or the lowering of ailerons in proportion to the disturbance of the equilibrium, the dangers attending its working would be very considerable. The gyroscope has not been found applicable to sea-going vessels in which weight is of comparatively no consequence. It therefore seems unreasonable

to expect that it could be used with advantage on an aerial craft. I think it will always be as necessary to rely on the skill of the aerial pilot as it is to depend on that of the captain of an ocean-going vessel.

With regard to the motor on which the safety, not only of those who may be on board the aeroplane but of those who are on terra firma beneath it, must depend, great progress has been made in 1909. It has been suggested it will be necessary to carry two motors on every flying machine to enable the pilot to keep the apparatus in the air, by driving one at full power in the case of the other breaking down. It is rightly argued that arrangement would at least enable the pilot to choose a safe landing-place, if it did not permit him to continue his flight. The additional weight is not, however, the only objection to that proposal. The mechanical complications it would necessitate are considerable. However, though the idea is one which should not be rejected as entirely impracticable, it should be remembered that the recent experiments of Orville Wright with his machine, Paulhan with his Henry Farman biplane, Latham with his Antoinette monoplane, Blériot with his monoplane, &c., seem to indicate that in the case of the breakdown of the motor the aeroplane can descend without disaster, especially if it is flying fairly high. When skimming the ground at the height of only 30 or 40 feet, the pilot has not sufficient time to utilise the fall as a motive power, and

ground and is generally wrecked, even if the occupant escapes without great injury. At the altitude of 50, 100, or more feet the pilot, if he is an experienced and skilful man, has the time necessary to realise the fact of the breakdown of the motor, and by using his horizontal rudder he can keep up the necessary speed of the flying apparatus by the force of the fall, and glide in stages safely to the ground. Indeed on January 7, the same day on which Latham made his sensational flight to the altitude of 3281 feet over the Camp de Chalons, Rougier at Issy les Moulineaux, just outside the gates of Paris, stopped his motor purposely when he had reached the height of 492 feet, and succeeded in bringing his Voisin machine to the ground as gently as if the motor had been kept working. Since that can be done from 500 feet above the ground, there seems no reason why it should be impossible to achieve without accident 8 descent under similar conditions from any altitude. An ordinary aeroplane with its pilot, motor, supply of essence, oil, &c., weighs about half ton. Whether it falls from the height of 500 or 5000 feet the result must be about the same. However that may be, it is not to be expected aviation will be an exception to the rule that every step forward in the march of civilisation claims its victims. Indeed, alas! Lieutenant Selfridge found his death when the machine, piloted by Orville Wright, on

came to the ground during the trials for its reception by the United States Government. Since then, within the last four months, four brave men have lost their lives in seeking to perfect the means of aerial locomotion. Lefebvre, the wellknown pilot of the Wright machine, perished at Port Aviation (Juvisy) on September 6; Captain Ferber, one of the first men in France to credit the assertions of the Wright Brothers concerning their secret flights, was killed at Boulogne-sur-Mer on September 22; Fernandez, the inventor of a biplane, lost his life at Nice on December 6; and Delagrange, the popular pioneer of the aerial science who, after Santos Dumont and Henry Farman, was the third man to leave the ground in Europe on a flying machine heavier than air, was killed at Croix d'Hins (Bordeaux) on January 4. The cause of the accident which happened to Lefebvre has not been established with any degree of certainty. After rising on his Wright machine to about 30 or 35 feet, the aeroplane, for some unknown reason, plunged straight to the ground. It is presumed that the mechanism of the horizontal rudder had either broken or refused work, paralysing the efforts of the aviator. Captain Ferber met his death while his Voisin machine was still rolling on the ground to get up speed for flight. It encountered a deep rut, which caused it to turn a somersault, in the course of which the pilot was crushed

to

by the motor. Fernandez perished in an accident similar to that which happened to Lefebvre-that is to say, the cord working the horizontal rudder broke while in the air, entailing the immediate fall of the biplane of his invention to the ground, which killed him on the spot. As for Delagrange, he probably did not realise the danger attending the use of a 50-h.p. motor on a machine built for an engine giving 25 h.p. at most. The Blériot monoplane (the little cross-Channel type) purchased by Delagrange was incapable of bearing for any great length of time the very considerable extra strain put on it by the increased weight of the motor, and above all, by the augmentation of speed given to the apparatus in the air. The machine was, so to say, torn to pieces by the wind. At the moment when the fatal accident happened the spectators saw with dismay one of its wings give way, causing the machine, which was travelling at a speed of between 53 and 55 miles an hour, to lose its balance and fall to the ground with tremendous force. It may be natural that the people who buy aeroplanes should seek to improve them, but all constructors tell their clients it is dangerous to modify or suppress even a wire stay. Many accidents will be avoided if they heed that warning. At any rate, the man who may modify his aeroplane with the hope of improving it Iwould do well to have it examined by the builder before trusting his life to it.

Paulhan's marvellous exploit in ascending to the altitude of 4986 feet on his Henry Farman biplane, provided with a Gnome rotative motor giving 50 h.p., and thus surpassing not only the altitude record for aeroplanes, but also that of 4921 feet for steerable balloons held by Capazza, has naturally drawn attention to the question of the diminution of the power of the motor at great altitudes. The Gnome Motor Company has considerable experience in the matter. One of its ordinary paraffin motors, installed on the Himalaya Mountains at the altitude of about 4000 metres (13,124 feet), gives about 30% less power than on the sea level. In constructing ordinary stationary paraffin motors this firm allows for a diminution of 10% of power at the altitude of 2625 feet, 20% at 5742 feet, 30% at 9187 feet, 40% at 13,124 feet, and 50% at 16,400 feet. The loss of the power of the motor must evidently be in proportion to the diminution of the density of the air, which, as is well known, decreases in proportion to the altitude. There are many other unsolved problems entailed in altitude flights. In proportion to the rarefaction of the air the propeller meets with less resistance, and consequently gives a less powerful thrust, but the aerial craft itself meets with less resistance in its progress through the thinner air. On the other hand, with every foot of increased altitude the bearing surfaces lose a fraction of their capacity to maintain the flying apparatus in the air, if the speed is not proportionally increased.

IF Sir Andrew Schaw was "queer" to all his social compeers, Scottish lairds with ancient Scottish names, who had English mothers, and had gone to English schools, and were Episcopalians, and, in character and accent, undistinguishable from the Englishmen they rode with half the year in Rotten Row,-it was not his fault, but due to his heredity. "The Siccar Schaws" was the bye-name of his folk from far-back years, and the steadfastness that name betokened was in no way else more manifest than in their nationality. They bided, most of them, at home, and married Scottish women; they bred true Scots, who might go round the world in English fighting-ships (with a piper in the poop at even-fall), but ever came back at last to Scotland, there to dwell content among the ancestral woods on the shores of the Scottish sea. The family's hereditary calling made the thing inevitable; no home had they away from Schawfield, save the narrow cabins their sovereign's ships; no chance to let the glamour of the city sink within them; for years on the wastes of ocean, passing between their stations, or sweltering in clammy lati

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VOL. CLXXXVII.—NO. MCXXXII.

tudes, the one spot of earth that rose to their inner eyes unutterably sweet because of its associations was the native parish where the lapwing whistled and the cool winds blew.

The first Captain Cutlasshe who won the appellationkept a flat blue bonnet in his shore portmanteau, and put it on whenever he had crossed the Border on his way to the North from Plymouth. "Thank God!" he would say with fervour then; "nae mair, for a while, o' those damned mim-mouthed gentlemen!" And his eye rejoiced, as the coach proceeded, at the sight of brick-built and flat-chested dwellings giving place to houses built of stone, their grey tones blending with the landscape and the careening clouds. The second Captain Cutlass had been nurtured too in the Scottish sentiment; loved, and rejoiced in his English seamen, but could not stand, as he professed, the English climate. "Sunshine and stour!" he summed it up with an honesty that would have much astonished any Continental with a Continental standard of a climate. And Cutlass Tertius, my eccentric hero, absorbed the same sentiments almost as soon as he supped porridge. They sent

P

him to the local grammarschool, and finished him in the College of St Andrews; they drove him all the way from Schawfield to the Solent, and saw him on his ship, as if he were a convict banished, without allowing him a sight of the siren London. Such times as he returned from his naval duties, he flew North without a pause, having seen the world widely, strange peoples, solemn temples, cities clamant, spacious harbours; and the first thing he would do when he got home, this sailor, was to mount a horse, dive into the sea at Whitfarland, or walk the roads with some ragged gangrel.

When his father died, Sir Andrew left the Navy. "Fifteen years of it, and never a shotted broadside! I'd be better reading old Epictetus," said he, and settled down to working his estate. With falling rents for his farms, and a distaste for shooting - tenants, he found it a rather barren patrimony, but never once did you hear the man lamenting. He came home from the sea with that air of mystery and romance that country people always look for in the mariner; stories were common of his carry-on in foreign ports, all lies, as it happened, but for some the lies invested him with charm. At first his people, hearing of his quixotic follies, made some efforts to exploit him for their own advantage, and, faith at times, he was a marvel of credulity; but it's ill to take the trousers off a Hielandman, and laird and

tenants settled down at last to a pleasant understanding based on mutual affection.

A man he was who, in some cranny of his being, kept a wild-flower soul inviolate; nothing could harm him, ache nor care for long distress him : a man with a tutored mind, he thought, was master of his fate and of the world, and every catastrophe could be resolved to nothing in an honest sleep.

We saw him, as I said, in those days, like a creature of our books, so debonair! so frank! and so ubiquitous! At early morning, when the frost or dew was still upon the lawn, he could be seen among the sheep-folds of the upper glens, smoking his pipe with shepherds; at noon no glade of the forest could be so hidden and remote, but we, bird-nesting, gathering white hay, or seeking red - pine roots for firewood, were not liable to find him there before us, standing in the grass like a woodland deity in an old pair of sailor's leggings, and he knew us all by name. At evening sports on the village common Captain Cutlass had been more than once the champion; he was often the soul of farmers' parties.

At first they were abashed at this curious condescension in a gentleman, who spoke Scots like themselves, and vastly wondered that he was so careless of the company of his social equals in the shire, and then at last ascribed it all to his want of money. Money he had, 'tis true, but not enough for a country magnate; and he never seemed so happy as when it