When once it is pointed out it is easy to see what a difference the presence of this disc makes. It is so simple that it cannot fail to act and having once produced that open mouth all the rest is due to the action of natural forces which can be absolutely relied upon. The ordinary parachute with its hopeless irregularities has, in fact, been converted into a machine whose action can _never_ fail. The disc is fastened to the balloon or aeroplane and is left behind when the parachute falls, having done its work. And now let us consider the tapes. As has already been remarked, a series of coiled cords cannot be relied upon to pull out straight without possibility of entanglement, but a tape, if folded to and fro like a Chinese cracker, will invariably do so. So packed tapes have been substituted for coiled corded rigging, with the certainty that they cannot be entangled in the fiercest air current. And now we come to another interesting feature. The man is not suspended directly from the small disc to which the tapes are attached but by a non-spinning sling which contains a shock absorber. This latter consists of a number of strands of rubber and it is owing to its action that the aviator who trusts his life to the parachute suffers little or no shock; even when the instant opening of the parachute begins to arrest his fall. And not only does it save him from shock, but it also avoids the possibility of too great a stress coming suddenly upon the parachute or its rigging of tapes. The aviator himself is attached to the parachute through the shock-absorber sling, by means of a harness which he wears constantly throughout his flight, so that in the event of trouble he only has to jump overboard and the parachute automatically does the rest. This harness consists of two light but strong aluminium tubular rings through which he places his arms, combined with a series of straps which can be so adjusted that the stress of carrying him comes upon those parts of his body best adapted to bear it. This improved parachute is the only one which is capable of being used instantly and without preparation for descent from an aeroplane flying at top speed. It is easy to see that it is one thing to drop from a stationary or nearly stationary balloon and quite another to dive from an aeroplane at one hundred miles per hour. The latter is equivalent to suddenly trusting oneself to a parachute _during the strongest gale_. It has been found, by experiment, however, that high speed is no bar to the use of this parachute since it only causes the parachute to open a little more quickly than usual, which means that it can be used with safety from an even lower height.