The boat itself is provided with water-tight compartments so that if any one compartment should be damaged the flotation afforded by the other would be sufficient to keep the craft afloat. It is also provided with wheels for making a landing on the shore; these wheels fold up, thus not interfering in the slightest with its manoeuvres over the water. The boat is so strongly built that it can be readily beached even through a high surf and handled the same as a fisherman would handle his dory, or it may be housed afloat like a motor boat or anchored to a buoy like a yacht. In rough water the spray-hood with which this type of boat is provided protects the navigators from getting wet and enables the craft to be used very much as you might use a high speed motor boat, with the added excitement of being able to rise above other crafts or fly over them if they get in the way. It looks very much like a flying fish in the air and although designed to skim close to the surface of the water at high speed it can rise to as high an altitude as the standard land machine. Mr. Curtiss states: "My idea was to provide a machine especially adapted for the requirements of the sportsman, one that would be simple to operate and absolutely safe. During the tests which we have made with this flying boat it carried three people with ease and the boat rose without difficulty with the extra passenger, although it is only designed to accommodate two people." With the hydroaeroplane a safe landing can always be made, and if, through inexperience or carelessness of the driver, a bad landing is made, no injury to the operator or passenger can occur other than what may result from a "ducking." [Illustration: THE EVOLUTION OF THE HYDRO] (A) (B) The flying boat of summer, 1912–on land and in the air. (C) A contrast–the hydroaeroplane of winter, 1911. [Illustration: HYDROAEROPLANE FLIGHTS] (A) Curtiss driving the "Triad" over Lake Erie, ground-swells at Atlantic City. (B) Witmer riding the ground-swells at Atlantic City. This boat shows how directly aeroplane-builders are turning to air craft available for amateur sport–not for exhibition "stunts." Such boats will have ample protection for the passenger and be able to carry a large quantity of fuel together with wireless apparatus and provisions, so that long overwater journeys may be made in comparative comfort, and also well within the radius of communication by wireless. And most of all they are safe!–A. P. THE NAVY ON THE HYDRO (AUGUSTUS POST) Captain Washington Irving Chambers, head of the Aeronautical Bureau, United States Navy, in a speech delivered at the Aeronautical Society's banquet in New York, said: "The hydroaeroplane is the coming machine so far as the navy is concerned; in fact, it has already come.[5] The navy machine built by Glenn Curtiss has had several tryouts and has proved itself a success. I recently had a flight with Mr. Curtiss in this machine, the 'Triad,' at Hammondsport, N. Y.