eir silly
names in the newspaper. It is interesting to note that neither of them
had ever been much beyond the twenty-thousand-foot level. Of course,
men have been higher than this both in balloons and in the ascent of
mountains. It must be well above that point that the aeroplane enters
the danger zone--always presuming that my premonitions are correct.

"Aeroplaning has been with us now for more than twenty years, and one
might well ask: Why should this peril be only revealing itself in our
day? The answer is obvious. In the old days of weak engines, when a
hundred horse-power Gnome or Green was considered ample for every need,
the flights were very restricted. Now that three hundred horse-power
is the rule rather than the exception, visits to the upper layers have
become easier and more common. Some of us can remember how, in our
youth, Garros made a world-wide reputation by attaining nineteen
thousand feet, and it was considered a remarkable achievement to fly
over the Alps. Our standard now has been immeasurably raised, and
there are twenty high flights for one in former years. Many of them
have been undertaken with impunity. The thirty-thousand-foot level has
been reached time after time with no discomfort beyond cold and asthma.
What does this prove? A visitor might descend upon this planet a
thousand times and never see a tiger. Yet tigers exist, and if he
chanced to come down into a jungle he might be devoured. There are
jungles of the upper air, and there are worse things than tigers which
inhabit them. I believe in time they will map these jungles accurately
out. Even at the present moment I could name two of them. One of them
lies over the Pau-Biarritz district of France. Another is just over my
head as I write here in my house in Wiltshire. I rather think there is
a third in the Homburg-Wiesbaden district.

"It was the disappearance of the airmen that first set me thinking. Of
course, everyone said that they had fallen into the sea, but that did
not satisfy me at all. First, there was Verrier in France; his machine
was found near Bayonne, but they never got his body. There was the
case of Baxter also, who vanished, though his engine and some of the
iron fixings were found in a wood in Leicestershire. In that case, Dr.
Middleton, of Amesbury, who was watching the flight with a telescope,
declares that just before the clouds obscured the view he saw the
machine, which was at an enormous h