The increase in speed of flight during 1910 was also quite remarkable. The official record by which Mr. Curtiss won the Bennett Aviation Contest at Rheims, in 1909, showed a speed of 47.04 miles an hour. Still higher velocities, ranging from 50 to 60 miles an hour, were reported later in that season from England and France. In 1910, however, at the Rheims aviation meet, Morane, with a Blériot monoplane, covered the 20-kilometer course in 12 minutes 45.2 seconds, or at an average speed of 66.2 miles an hour, showing a gain of forty per cent on Mr. Curtiss’s speed of the preceding year. Still better was achieved at the international tournament held at Belmont Park in 1910. Le Blanc in a 100-horse Blériot monoplane, especially designed for speed, covered nineteen laps of the 5-kilometer course at an average rate of 61 miles an hour, and his fastest lap at the rate of 71.68 miles an hour, thus exceeding Curtiss’s speed of the previous year by fifty per cent. Other spurts during the latter part of 1910 were reported to have attained nearly 80 miles an hour over a closed circuit, though perhaps not a level one. The best results were achieved with machines having high power engines, small surfaces and slight forward resistance. The advance in long-distance flying in 1910 more than kept pace with the progress in speed. The best achievement at the close of the preceding year had been Farman’s flight of 144 miles at an average rate of 35.06 miles an hour in a closed circuit. At the Rheims aviation meet in 1910, Jan Olieslaegers, in a Blériot monoplane, driven by a Gnome engine, covered 244 miles in a rectangular course, at an average speed of 48.31 miles an hour. At Buc, on the 28th of October, an aviator of three months’ practice, Maurice Tabuteau, in a Maurice Farman biplane, driven by a Rénault engine, flew over a closed circuit, covering 288.8 miles at an average speed of 47.9 miles an hour. At Pau on December 21st, M. G. Leganeaux, in a Blériot monoplane, flew for the Michelin Cup, covering 516 kilometers or 320.6 miles in six hours and one minute, or at an average speed of 53¼ miles an hour—a splendid showing. Finally, at Buc, on December 30th, Tabuteau, flying for the annual Michelin prize, covered 362.66 miles in a Maurice Farman biplane with an 8-cylinder 60-horse Rénault motor. The average speed in this very long flight was 47.3 miles an hour, or practically the rate by which Curtiss won the international contest of the preceding year. Of course a considerably better showing of both distance and velocity could have been made on a longer course.