The circumstances surrounding my fourth emergency parachute jump were almost similar to those of the third. I took-off from the Lambert-St. Louis Field at 4:20 P.M., made a five minute stop at Springfield, Ill., an hour later to take on mail, and then headed for Peoria. Weather reports telephoned to St. Louis earlier in the afternoon gave flying conditions as entirely passable. About twenty-five miles north of Springfield darkness was encountered, the ceiling had lowered to around 400 feet and a light snow was falling. At South Pekin the forward visibility of ground lights from a 150 ft. altitude was less than half a mile, and over Pekin the town lights were indistinct from 200 ft. above. After passing Pekin the plane was flown at an altimeter reading of 600 feet for about five minutes, when the lightness of the haze below indicated that it was over Peoria. Twice I could see lights on the ground and I descended to less than 200 feet before they disappeared from view. I tried to bank around one group of lights, but was unable to turn quickly enough to keep in sight. After circling in the vicinity of Peoria for 30 minutes, I decided to try and find better weather conditions by flying northeast towards Chicago. I had ferried a ship from Chicago to St. Louis in the early afternoon, at which time the ceiling and visibility were much better near Chicago than anywhere else along the route. Enough gasoline for about an hour and ten minutes’ flying remained in the gas tank, and 20 minutes in the reserve, hardly enough to return to St. Louis even had I been able to navigate directly to the field by dead reckoning and flying blind the greater portion of the way. The territory towards Chicago was much more favorable for a night landing than that around St. Louis. For the next half hour the flight northeast was at about 2000 feet altitude and then at 600 feet. There were now numerous breaks in the clouds and occasionally ground lights could be seen from over 500 feet. After passing over the light of a small town a fairly clear space in the clouds was encountered. I pulled up to about 600 feet, released the parachute flare, whipped the ship around to get into the wind and under the flare which lit at once. Instead of floating down slowly, however, it dropped like a rock. I could see the ground for only an instant and then there was total darkness. Meantime the ship was in a steep bank, and being blinded by the intense light I had trouble righting it. An effort to find the ground with the wing lights was in vain as their glare was worse than useless in the haze.