"A bird!" was the famous reply, "Les oiseaux ne savent pas voler!" ("The birds don’t know how to fly!") And indeed the bird-man, soaring at immense height and incredible speed, has left the little denizen of the air far behind. The wings of the machine are rigid, it is true, but also they are tireless; and the skill of the inventor and science of the mathematician have excelled the pulsing wings of flesh and feather. A few years back—ten years ago to be exact—the birds must have tittered as they watched at Bagatelle the fearsome efforts of the ugly ducklings of the early days of aviation. On November 13, 1906, a famous date in the history of flying, Santos Dumont flew 220 metres in twenty-one seconds, that is, at the rate of nearly thirty-eight kilometers an hour. He had won the prize of the Aero Club for a hundred meters in a straight line. The experiments began at ten in the morning, but the test was not accomplished until late in the afternoon. Two enormous birds spreading their white wings of canvas—the one belonging to Santos Dumont and the other to Blériot—lay upon the green carpet of the ground. A crowd of enthusiasts, amongst whom were some of the great names in aeronautics, such as M. Archdeacon, the Marquis de Dion, Surcouf, Louis Renault and M. Besançon, were upon the ground surrounding the two pioneers and eagerly discussing the theories of lighter than air and heavier than air—that is, the bag filled with hydrogen that floated in air, or the aeroplane which flew by its own means of engine and wings. The machine of Santos Dumont was a weird-looking thing. Some compared it with an ibis or heron as it rose into the air with its long neck outstretched and its wings spread—a strange thing like an antediluvian bird. Its planes were formed of canvas frames divided into cubes, so that at one angle it looked like a flying cupboard. The square box-like head in front was the steering apparatus. The tail of the beast was represented by the screw continually lashing its way through the air. The pioneer sat in a little cage arrangement between the planes, so that his head and body emerged and he had the appearance of riding astride. The first starts were a little unpromising. The machine rose a few inches, and then a few yards, and came to earth abruptly in each case. In three separate attempts it flew one hundred and fifty yards in all, achieving, in the third attempt, eighty yards in seven seconds. But it was not until the light was failing that the machine really rose to any height. It then flew at six metres from the ground at a tremendous rate. The airman, however, was forced to descend for fear of an accident to the crowd, which was following his movements with impassioned interest. He had won the prize of the Aero Club for sustained flight, an advance, at any rate, upon the series of leaps in the air which had passed for flight before that. It was said that the Wright brothers had flown