The history of flight in England from 1908, when Mr. Roe and Mr. Cody first flew, to 1912, when flying became a part of the duty of the military and naval forces of the Crown, is the history of a ferment, and cannot be exhibited in any tight or ordered sequence of cause and effect. Before the Government took in hand the building up of an air service, there were many beginnings of private organization. A man cannot fly until he has a machine and a place for starting and alighting. These are expensive and elaborate requirements, not easily furnished without co-operation. The Aeronautical Society did much to make flight possible, but its labours were mainly scientific and theoretical. In 1901 Mr. F. Hedges Butler earned his place among the pioneers of the air by founding the Aero Club of the United Kingdom. This club has played a great and honourable part in the promotion of aerial navigation. When it was founded no power-driven aeroplane had as yet carried a man in the air, and the original interest of its members was in the airship, which had been brought into high credit by M. Santos Dumont; but they were quick to recognize the coming of the aeroplane, and the Hon. C. S. Rolls, who helped Mr. Butler to found the club, was one of the boldest and most skilful of early pilots. The club brought together inventors and sportsmen, and supplied them with a suitable ground for their experiments. It undertook the training of aviators, and from 1910 onwards, issued its certificates, which, when the Government began to build the Flying Corps, were officially recognized as a warrant of proficiency in the new art. An immense service was rendered in these early years by gentlemen adventurers, engineers and pilots, who, all for love and nothing for reward, built machines and flew them. Some of these, when the storm broke, became the mainstay of the national force. To take only two names out of the first hundred to whom the Aero Club granted its certificate--a list crowded with distinction and achievement--it is not easy to assess the national debt to Mr. T. O. M. Sopwith and Mr. Geoffrey de Havilland. It was in the latter part of 1911 that Mr. Sopwith, having flown with skill and distinction on the machines which he had bought, began to build an aeroplane from his own designs. At that time there were no aeroplane draughtsmen, and he had to stand by and instruct his mechanics point by point. He could not afford to rent a proper workshop; the machine was built in a rough wooden shed, unsupplied with water, and lighted after dark by paraffin lamps. Six men built the machine, and Mr. Sopwith flew it from the ground on which the shed stood. Its performance was better than had ever been obtained from a machine of equal horse-power. It was subsequently bought by the Admiralty, and Mr. Sopwith began to build another aeroplane of higher power, and a flying boat. In 1912 he took premises at Kingston, and there finished these two machines.