Maloney he was unconscious and lived only thirty minutes. The
only mark of any kind on him was a scratch from a wire on the side of
his neck. The six attending physicians were puzzled at the cause of his
death. This is remarkable for a vertical descent of over 2,000 feet.'

The flights were brought to an end by the San Francisco earthquake in
April, 1906, which, Montgomery states, 'Wrought such a disaster that I
had to turn my attention to other subjects and let the aeroplane rest
for a time.' Montgomery resumed experiments in 1911 in California, and
in October of that year an accident brought his work to an end. The
report in the American Aeronautics says that 'a little whirlwind caught
the machine and dashed it head on to the ground; Professor Montgomery
landed on his head and right hip. He did not believe himself seriously
hurt, and talked with his year-old bride in the tent. He complained of
pains in his back, and continued to grow worse until he died.'

IX. NOT PROVEN

The early history of flying, like that of most sciences, is replete
with tragedies; in addition to these it contains one mystery concerning
Clement Ader, who was well known among European pioneers in the
development of the telephone, and first turned his attention to the
problems of mechanical flight in 1872. At the outset he favoured the
ornithopter principle, constructing a machine in the form of a bird with
a wing-spread of twenty-six feet; this, according to Ader's conception,
was to fly through the efforts of the operator. The result of such
an attempt was past question and naturally the machine never left the
ground.

A pause of nineteen years ensued, and then in 1886 Ader turned his mind
to the development of the aeroplane, constructing a machine of bat-like
form with a wingspread of about forty-six feet, a weight of eleven
hundred pounds, and a steam-power plant of between twenty and thirty
horse-power driving a four-bladed tractor screw. On October 9th, 1890,
the first trials of this machine were made, and it was alleged to have
flown a distance of one hundred and sixty-four feet. Whatever truth
there may be in the allegation, the machine was wrecked through
deficient equilibrium at the end of the trial. Ader repeated the
construction, and on October 14th, 1897, tried out his third machine
at the military establishment at Satory in the presence of the French
military authorities, on a circular track specially prepared for the
expe