in December 1903 is the most
difficult and uncertain part of all. Yet the broad outlines of the
process can be sketched and determined. It is a long story of legends
and dreams, theories and fancies, all suddenly transformed into facts; a
tale of the hopes of madmen suddenly recognized as reasonable ambitions.
When in the light of the present we look back on the past our eyes are
opened, and we see many things that were invisible to contemporaries. We
are able, for the first time, to pay homage to the pioneers, who saw the
promised kingdom, but did not enter it. No place has hitherto been found
for their names in serious history. _The Dictionary of National
Biography_, with its supplement, includes the lives of all the famous
men of this nation who died before King George the Fifth was king. Yet
it contains no mention of Sir George Cayley, the Father of British
Aeronautics; nor of John Stringfellow, who, in 1848, constructed the
first engine-driven aeroplane that ever flew through the air; nor of
Francis Herbert Wenham, whose classic treatise on Aerial Locomotion,
read at the first meeting of the Aeronautical Society, in 1866, expounds
almost every principle on which modern aviation is founded; nor of James
Glaisher, who, in 1862; made the highest recorded balloon ascent; nor of
Percy Sinclair Pilcher, who lost his life in experimenting with one of
his own gliders in 1899. These men attracted little enough notice in
their own day, and were regarded as amiable eccentrics; but they all
thought long and hard on aerial navigation, and step by step, at their
own costs, they brought it nearer to accomplishment.

Now that the thing has been done, it seems strange that it was not done
earlier. At no time was it possible for man to forget his disabilities;
the birds were always above him, in easy possession. If he attributed
their special powers wholly to the lightness of their structure and the
strength of their muscles, the variety of flying creatures might have
taught him better. The fact is that there is no unique design for
flight; given the power and its right use, almost anything can fly. If
the sea-gull can fly, so can the duck, with a much heavier body and a
much less proportion of wing. The moth can fly; but so can the beetle.
The flying-fish can fly, or rather, can leap into the air and glide for
a distance of many yards. With the requisite engine-power a portmanteau
or a tea-tray could support itself in the air. The m