Ever since Postmaster-General Hitchcock made this trip he has been an enthusiastic advocate of the aeroplane as a means of transporting mail over difficult routes. During the next few months he granted permission to a number of aviators, including Ovington, Milling, Arnold, Robinson, Lincoln Beachey, Charles F. Walsh, Beckwith Havens, Charles C. Witmer, and Eugene Godet, all of whom fly Curtiss machines, to act as special mail carriers, and these men have carried mail bags in similar exhibiting tests from aviation fields to points near the Post Office. Among the cities where such tests have been officially made are Rochester, N. Y.; Dubuque, Iowa; Fort Smith, Ark.; Temple and Houston, Texas; Atlanta, Savannah, Columbia, and Rome, Ga.; and Spartanburg and Salisbury, N. C. The record for long-distance mail carrying is held by Hugh Robinson, who took a bag of mail at Minneapolis, Minn., and carried it on his long flight down the Mississippi River in a hydroaeroplane as far as Rock Island, Ill. The distance covered by Robinson was 375 miles on this trip, and letters and first class mail matter were put off and taken on at Winona, Minn.; Prairie du Chien, Wis.; Dubuque and Clinton, Iowa; and Rock Island, Ill. Of course the aeroplane is, at present, best suited for carrying mail in localities where the weather is equable; in such places it offers a speedy, direct, and dependable service. These numerous experiments in mail-carrying by aeroplane have brought about the urging of an appropriation by Congress for this purpose. The second Assistant Postmaster-General, who is in charge of mail transportation, in a report that has just been made public at the time I am writing this, asks for $50,000 for the transportation of mails by aeroplane. Part of this fund may be devoted to mail routes in the Alaskan interior. One government has actively entered on practical mail-carrying by aeroplane. Belgium has voted a fund to establish routes across seven hundred miles of impenetrable Congo jungle. WIRELESS The aeroplane is ideal for use with wireless telegraphy and the combination of the aeroplane's ability to obtain information and the ability to transmit it by wireless will be one of its most important future developments in practical usefulness. Wireless experiments do not involve any great problem, as messages have been successfully transmitted from an aeroplane to land stations many times. The receiving of a wireless message by an operator in an aeroplane from a land station or from a warship involves considerable difficulty because of the noise and vibration of the motor, but it is expected, however, that this will be soon entirely overcome and that it will be possible to transmit or receive telegrams in an aeroplane to or from distant points with the same ease and accuracy that it is now seen on the ground or on the water.