e of the monoplane:
it is far more dangerous to the pilot than is the biplane. Most of
the fatal accidents in aviation have been caused through mishaps to
monoplanes or their engines, and chiefly for this reason the biplane has
to a large extent supplanted the monoplane in warfare. The biplane, too,
is better adapted for observation work, which is, after all, the chief
use of air-craft.

In a later chapter some account will be given of the three types of
aeroplane which the war has evolved--the general-purposes machine,
the single-seater "fighter", and those big bomb-droppers, the British
Handley Page and the German Gotha.

CHAPTER XXIX. Henri Farman and the Voisin Biplane

The coming of the motor engine made events move rapidly in the world of
aviation. About the year 1906 people's attention was drawn to France,
where Santos Dumont was carrying out the wonderful experiments which we
have already described. Then came Henri Farman, who piloted the famous
biplane built by the Voisin brothers in 1907; an aeroplane destined
to bring world-wide renown to its clever constructors and its equally
clever and daring pilot.

There were notable points of distinction between the Voisin biplane
and that built by the Wrights. The latter, as we have seen, had two
propellers; the former only one. The launching skids of the Wright
biplane gave place to wheels on Farman's machine. One great advantage,
however, possessed by the early Wright biplane over its French rivals,
was in its greater general efficiency. The power of the engine was only
about one-half of the power required in certain of the French designs.
This was chiefly due to the use of the launching rail, for it needed
much greater motor power to make a machine rise from the ground by its
own motor engine than when it received a starting lift from a falling
weight. Even in our modern aeroplanes less engine power is required to
drive the craft through the air than to start from the ground.

Farman achieved great fame through his early flights, and, on 13th
January, 1908, at the flying ground at Issy, in France, he won the prize
of L2000, offered by MM. Deutsch and Archdeacon to the first aviator
who flew a circular kilometre. In July of the same year he won another
substantial prize given by a French engineer, M. Armengaud, to the first
pilot who remained aloft for a quarter of an hour.

Probably an even greater performance was the cross-country flight made
by Farman a