To return to the amateur, it is always better to go around an object that you can not land on immediately. Landing is indeed one of the most important points for the amateur aviator to consider. If it is possible, watch all accidents and study them closely. I take every means I can to learn what causes an accident so as to guard against it myself. Strictly speaking almost everything about the art of aviation is being learned by experimentation and the causes of accidents, while not always exactly ascertainable, are of the greatest interest to builders and operators of flying machines, for out of the accidents of to-day often come the improvements of to-morrow. While learning, and indeed whenever possible, you should examine the ground before attempting to fly over it. The pupil should inspect every inch of the course over which he is to fly, by walking carefully over it, noticing all the holes and obstructions in the ground. Then should it be necessary to land, for any cause whatever, he will know instinctively where to land and what to avoid in landing. Keep away from other aeroplanes, for the wind-wash in their wake may tip up your plane and cause serious trouble. My advice to the amateur begins and ends with one injunction: "Go slow." Yes, for more than a month, "Go slow." It is hard to resist the temptation to try to do stunts; with a certain amount of familiarity with your machine, so that you feel you could do a great deal more than you are doing, and with some experienced and confident performer all but turning somersaults with his machine over your head, to the delight of the crowd, it is hard to resist giving one's self the thrill that comes from taking a risk and not being caught, but you will do the stunts all the better for going slow at first. Mr. Charles Battell Loomis, the late American humourist, said once, in talking about the opening of the fields of air: "It was thought that the automobile was a machine of danger, but the aeroplane has made it comparatively safe. A man in an aeroplane a mile above the earth, taking his first lesson all by himself, is in a perilous position. He has not one chance in a thousand of ever owning another machine. "A man who will fly over a city full of hard-working people is a selfish brute. Until a man is absolutely sure of himself he should always fly with a good-sized net suspended beneath his machine. "The man in the street has always hated new things. He hated velocipedes, then bicycles, then safeties, then automobiles, then motorcycles, but he has not yet learned to hate the aeroplane. But wait until monkey wrenches begin to fall on Broadway or beginners begin to fall on the man in the street. Then he will be mad at the aeroplane–if there is anything left of him." Allowing for the humorous exaggeration, there is this element of truth in this that mechanical flight has as yet a strong element of uncertainty.