istake would be
much more severe.

At the conclusion of his experiments he decided that neither the
multiple plane nor the biplane type of glider was sufficiently perfected
for the application of motive power. In spite of the amount of automatic
stability that he had obtained he considered that there was yet more to
be done, and he therefore advised that every possible method of securing
stability and safety 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 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 likel