Books Recently Received: An Important Text‐Book on Air Navigation—Timber Nomenclature—Official Handbooks Available to Purchase

Aerial Navigation has not yet conic into its own. It is a little doubtful if it ever will during this generation. Man is by nature prone to accept, and use, the line of least resistance, and those pilots who in their early stages are apt to follow railways in preference to keeping “red on red” are equally likely to demand wireless directional or homing devices in preference to the use of stars. However much we may be able to put aerial navigation in all its branches into effect on paper, when it comes to its practical application without the use of wireless it fails in its object. It is understood that even our record long‐distance flight pilots did not know where they were for some considerable time as “they had no means of checking earlier sights.” Hinkler used a thorough knowledge of air pilotage. The Mollisons presumably work on the same basis. Imperial Airways use wireless. The taxi‐pilot of the small machine uses a vast store of accumulated knowledge of air pilotage and takes a machine through weather the air liners go above. He has no wireless and no sextant, but he gets there because he understands the fundamentals and knows how to apply them.