Getting Above Ourselves.

miles an hour through the rarified atmosphere, Colonel Lindbergh had already moved up several storeys (or should one write strata?) and had put up a new time-record for the United States trans-Continental flight by flying at over 14,000 feet. Though Lindbergh wisely pointed out, after his flight, that it was too early to draw conclusions, the quest for air-routes above the storm-planes has now definitely begun. Birkenhead builds so much on high flying that he even talks of an expedition to Mars. The world did not step out quite in that direction while his pages were going to press, but it did get on the trail of what is hoped to be a new planet. Few responsible writers in the Old World treat this American claim with the levity simulated by some contemporary writers in New Zealand. A month after his first announcement, the Director of Lowell (Arizona) repeated his belief that the trans-Neptunian object shown on the plate is a planet, not a comet. Dr. J. Jackson, of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, writes that “the orbit is that of a comet, but the appearance is that of a planet.” That is to say, the body appears on the plate sharply, not with an appearance of nebulosity.

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The re-appearance of Lindbergh in pioneer (altitude) flying seems to have been the signal for the re-appearance of the evergreen Kingsford Smith. His aim was