These machines can be equipped with more surface and they can be specially built to carry as much as two barrels of fuel, which would enable them to fly nearly twelve hundred miles if the wind were steady. They can also fly in very high winds up to almost one hundred miles an hour, which is the speed at which some of the higher air currents flow, as proved by the flight of balloons. This would of course tremendously increase the distance covered. All this is possible to-day and it seems that the aeroplane has already done every thing possible to be done on land. Bleriot crossed the English channel, Chavez crossed the Alps, and Rodgers crossed the American continent, passing over the Rocky Mountains, and making over four thousand miles in the air. The only thing now left is to cross the ocean. An attempt has been made to cross the Atlantic in a dirigible balloon. You all remember how Walter Wellman flew out over the ocean from Atlantic City in one of the largest dirigible balloons ever constructed here, the "America," remained three days in the air, and covered over twelve hundred miles, even though his motors were running only a part of the time. He was fortunate enough to be rescued and brought back to land by the steamer Trent. And nothing daunted, his chief engineer Melville Vaniman constructed another large dirigible the "Akron," on which he met such an untimely end. Another entrant in the world race to cross the ocean is Dr. Gans who, with the backing of the German government, plans to start in his dirigible balloon the "Suchard" from the Island of Teneriffe, one of the Azores, to attempt the crossing of the Southern Atlantic. He will endeavour to be the "Columbus of the air" and be wafted above the waves by the selfsame winds which always blow in that part of the ocean to the West Indies, just as the first man to accomplish this passage was driven over the surface of the sea with his small ships. Such great enterprises bid fair to embolden aviators in their aeroplanes to try to win the laurels due the first to be successful. Many aeronauts and aviators seem to be focussing their minds at the present moment on this great problem. It seems always a condition necessary to precede the accomplishment of any great thing that popular thought should be centred upon it; then some one rises to the occasion and the thing is done. There is no doubt that such a flight is possible to-day, just as the flight across the United States was possible in even the early stages of aviation. For the machine and motor which actually accomplished this trip were almost the same as the very first models; but it took the man to do it.