lliard table, a pilot has found, when it is too late, that the
ground has sloped so steeply that his machine, after landing, has run
on downhill and ended by crashing into a fence or ditch.

It is very necessary for an airman to learn to judge, by its
appearance, the difference between an expanse, say, of pasture land,
or a field which is in green corn or standing hay. It has happened
often that a pilot, descending after engine failure towards what he
has reckoned a grass field, has discovered--when too low to change his
landing-point--that his pasture land is actually a field of green corn;
and a landing under such conditions, with the corn binding on the
running-gear of the machine, may end in the aircraft coming to an
abrupt halt, and then pitching forward on its nose; with a broken
propeller and perhaps other damages in consequence.

In choosing a landing ground, as in other problems that face the
novice in cross-country flying, experience will prove his safeguard.
He will learn for instance that cattle or sheep, if they can be
discerned below in a field, go to show that this field is one of
pasture and not of crops. If no cattle are to be seen in a field, and
the aviator is doubtful about it, and yet if it happens to be the only
suitable one he can locate, then he may look closely at the gateway
which leads into the field. If, in this gateway, he can detect such
scars or markings on the ground as are caused by the feet of cattle as
they walk daily in and out, he may feel satisfied the field is one of
pasture.

When cattle or sheep are seen standing in a field so that they face in
the same direction, this may suggest either the existence of a slope,
or the presence of a strong ground wind; while a stream or brook at
the edge of a stretch of open land, or a belt of woods, may suggest a
sloping of the ground.

It is amusing for a pilot--or it was so, rather, in the days when few
aeroplanes were in existence--to note the astonishment which his
descent, made quite unexpectedly perhaps in some quiet and rural
country, will occasion amongst the inhabitants. Sometimes, under the
stress of such an excitement, people appear to lose for the time being
their power of coherent speech. A pilot in a cross-country contest,
not being sure whether he was on his right course, decided to make a
landing and ask his way. He noticed, after a while, the figure of a
man in a field below. Planing down, and alighting in the field, he
sh