air lies with the machine that comes nearest to natural flight. This
still remains for the future to settle.

Farman's world record, which won the Grand Prix de Champagne, was done
with a Gnome Rotary Motor which had only been run on the test bench
and was fitted to his machine four hours before he started on the great
flight. His propeller had never been tested, having only been completed
the night before. The closing laps of that flight, extending as they did
into the growing of the dusk, made a breathlessly eerie experience for
such of the spectators as stayed on to watch--and these were many. Night
came on steadily and Farman covered lap after lap just as steadily, a
buzzing, circling mechanism with something relentless in its isolated
persistency.

The final day of the meeting provided a further record in the quarter
million spectators who turned up to witness the close of the great week.
Bleriot, turning out in the morning, made a landing in some such fashion
as flooded the carburettor and caused it to catch fire. Bleriot himself
was badly burned, since the petrol tank burst and, in the end, only
the metal parts of the machine were left. Glenn Curtis tried to beat
Bleriot's time for a lap of the course, but failed. In the evening,
Farman and Latham went out and up in great circles, Farman cleaving his
way upward in what at the time counted for a huge machine, on circles
of about a mile diameter. His first round took him level with the top of
the stands, and, in his second, he circled the captive balloon anchored
in the middle of the grounds. After another circle, he came down on a
long glide, when Latham's lean Antoinette monoplane went up in circles
more graceful than those of Farman. 'Swiftly it rose and swept round
close to the balloon, veered round to the hangars, and out over to the
Rheims road. Back it came high over the stands, the people craning their
necks as the shrill cry of the engine drew nearer and nearer behind the
stands. Then of a sudden, the little form appeared away up in the deep
twilight blue vault of the sky, heading straight as an arrow for the
anchored balloon. Over it, and high, high above it went the Antoinette,
seemingly higher by many feet than the Farman machine. Then, wheeling
in a long sweep to the left, Latham steered his machine round past the
stands, where the people, their nerve-tension released on seeing the
machine descending from its perilous height of 500 feet, shouted thei