The flying machine is the only land vehicle which requires no "permanent way." Trains must have rails, bicycles and automobiles must have good roads. Even the pedestrian gets along better on a path. The ships of the air and the sea demand no improvement of the fluids in which they float. To carry mails, parcels, persons, and even light freight--these applications, if made commercially practicable tomorrow,[D] would surprise no one; their possibility has already been amply demonstrated. With the dirigible as the transatlantic liner and the aeroplane as the naphtha launch of the air, the whole range of applications is commanded. Hangars and landing stages--the latter perhaps on the roofs of buildings, revolutionizing our domestic architecture--may spring up as rapidly as garages have done. And the aeroplane is potentially (with the exception of the motorcycle) the cheapest of self-propelled vehicles. Governments have already considered the possibilities of aerial smuggling. Perhaps our custom-house officers will soon have to watch a fence instead of a line: to barricade in two dimensions instead of one. They will need to be provided with United States Revenue aeroplanes. But how are aerial frontiers to be marked? And does a nation own the air above it, or is this, like the high seas, "by natural right, common to all"? Can a flying-machine blockade-runner above the three-mile height claim extraterritoriality? The flying machine is no longer the delusion of the "crank," because it has developed a great industry. A now antiquated statement put the capitalization of aeroplane manufactories in France at a million dollars, and the development expenditure to date at six millions. There are dozens of builders, in New York City alone, of monoplanes, biplanes, gliders, and models. A permanent exhibition of air craft is just being inaugurated. We have now even an aeronautic "trust," since the million-dollar capitalization of the Maxim, Blériot, Grahame-White firm.