In order to encourage the designing and construction of soaring machines, I suggest that a sum of money be raised to be offered as a prize to the constructor of the most successful soaring-machine, the award to be made after a public trial of the same, to take place early in September of the present year (1894). I will subscribe one hundred dollars if others will subscribe, in any sums they choose, nine hundred dollars more, to make a purse of one thousand dollars, provided that the publisher of some journal of wide influence will be custodian of the fund. One or two more thoughts in conclusion. We have seen how the soaring bird tacks, first up, then down, then up again, and then down again. That conveys the idea of the perfection of rapid transit for passengers and freight. With the captive balloon we can tack up, with the soaring machine we can tack down. Short tacks up, long tacks down; there is no calm for the aeroplane; give it altitude and it can seize from the calm the wind of flight. Imagine a bowling alley four hundred feet long, perfectly level, with an athlete at one end and a boy at the other. Let the chute which returns the balls have a drop of fifteen inches in every one hundred feet; imagine the game to be one of rapid transit instead of ten-pins. It is a competition between the two ends of the alley to see which end can make the most of what energy it has. Let the athlete exert all his strength to propel the spheres; see them arrive at the end of the alley after their journey of four hundred feet, with sluggish speed; the boy lifts them to a height of five feet to the chute, gives them a gentle push, and they are returned to the athlete’s end, arriving, not as sluggards, but as filled with energy. A short tack up and a long tack down is what does it. There you have the old and the new methods of transit represented. The athlete represents the steam locomotive which, with all its polish and glitter, wastes energy. The boy represents the balloon, the lifter, which stores energy in matter by giving it altitude. The chute represents the free highway which through all the centuries men have supposed to be lacking. Aerial transit will be accomplished because the air is a solid if you hit it hard enough. _James Means._ * * * * * Transcriber’s note: --Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.