During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries some very strange flying machines were made, and even before that time, in the reign of James IV. of Scotland, we find that "The Abbot of Tungland tuik in hand to flie with wingis." The bold Churchman, however, did not succeed in his rash venture, but fell from the wall of Stirling Castle and broke his thigh. In 1709 another monk planned a wonderful flying ship which was to carry twelve men besides stores of food, and about sixty years later a Frenchman made himself "A whirl of feathers, curiously interlaced and extending gradually at suitable distances in a horizontal direction from his head to his feet." In this eccentric costume the would-be bird-man fluttered down from a height of seventy feet and escaped uninjured. [Illustration: WATERPLANE, BIPLANE, AND SCOUT BALLOON.] The makers of balloons, meanwhile, met with more success, and they bravely experimented with their frail contrivances, which at first were filled with heated air and necessitated a fire in the basket-work car, fed with fuel of chopped straw. As may be imagined, many accidents occurred, but the inventors went on their way undaunted, and in the middle of the nineteenth century we find a man named Nadar constructing an enormous balloon called the "Giant," which seems to have been the forerunner of the great airships of to-day. This monster would, we hear, have exactly fitted into the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. It had a smaller balloon attached to it, and below both a car fitted with wheels. This was divided into compartments for the captain and the passengers, with beds, baggage, and provisions, while a printing office and a photographer's room were included. Nadar's ambitions, however, did not stop at this marvel. Indeed, the "Giant" was only intended to be a means of raising funds for the making of a flying machine, which was to be called the aeronef and have wings and a screw propeller. The difficulty then, and for many years afterwards, was to make an engine which at the same time should be sufficiently strong and yet light. It was not until another fifty years had passed that this problem was solved and then we find the modern aeroplanes and hydroplanes being gradually developed and improved. In 1909 a French aviator crossed the Channel for the first time, and since then the progress has been extraordinary, so that now we think little of feats which a dozen years ago would have been considered quite outside the bounds of possibility. Side by side with the aeroplanes, dirigible balloons have been developed, and we can hardly doubt that in the future this mode of travel will come to be as safe and almost as commonplace as our railways and motor-cars of to-day. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY BILLING AND SONS, LTD., GUILDFORD AND ESHER _Uniform with this Book._ HAPPY HOMES IN FOREIGN LANDS By A. A. METHLEY, F.R.G.S.