Early in the morning of May 31st Commander Read started from Ferrol for Plymouth, and at the end of seven hours and six minutes of flight came down in the harbor, where a warm reception was waiting for him. The actual flying time since leaving the Rockaway Naval Air Station was fifty-seven hours and sixteen minutes, and the average rate of flight was at a speed of sixty-eight nautical miles an hour. VII LANDING-FIELDS--THE IMMEDIATE NEED The immediate need, to establish aviation throughout the entire country, is a series of landing-fields from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. These landing-fields should not be designed primarily for transcontinental flying-stations, but for city-to-city flying. There is going to be a great amount of aerial traffic from New York to San Francisco, to be sure, but the future of flying is in the linking up of cities a few hundred miles apart. The War Department has already taken steps, and will establish thirty-two fields in the country to encourage flying. Many more are needed. Atlantic City is apparently the pioneer air port of the country, and for many reasons this is natural. There are political and social advantages which make Atlantic City ideal. Rules have been laid down for the coming and going of airships, and a field for land machines and water space for seaplanes have been laid out. A large aeronautical convention has already been held there. Every city in the United States will have a landing-field and hangars for airplanes, as well as mechanics to care for them. Whether this is to be a private or public enterprise lies in the hands of the people handling such things. Much could be said for either type of establishment. The thing must come; it is as logical as one, two, three. There are some, perhaps, who remember the roars of derision which went up when the first automobile garage was established in their town. Such a thing was visionary-there would never be enough machines to make it pay! There are many reasons why it is impossible to consider the use of city roofs, for the present, as suitable landing-places for airplanes. In fact, the first successful landing on a roof made by Jules Vedrines last January was hailed as a feat of almost unparalleled daring. He flew and landed on the roof of the Galeries Lafayette in Paris, and won a prize of $5,000 for doing it. The police of Paris refused to allow him to fly off the roof, and he was compelled to take his machine apart and lower it in an elevator. The theory of flight, the laws which make it possible apparently to defy all laws of gravitation, make it impossible for us to depend on the roofs of buildings in large cities and landing-places. It will be a long time before the dreams of men who would establish landing-places on hotel roofs can come true. The progress of aeronautical development has been great enough so that there is no need to overemphasize it--to set ridiculous tasks which cannot be accomplished.