The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. TUESDAY, JUNE 27, 1911. PERILS OF THE AIR.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 107, 27 June 1911, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. TUESDAY, JUNE 27, 1911. PERILS OF THE AIR.

Many perils await the aerial navigator, not tlm least of which—and certainly the most unexpected—-is the danger of being at canned in certain localities by eagles, an exciting adventure with tacKj nirds having actually taken place quite recently. An Australian exchange, writing on this incident, remarks in at if too superDrcadiuuiglit, with its batteries of thundering, KUin. guns, is.the lord .of the sea, the eagle, which in remote antiquity was adopted as the symbol of aspiring power, is still the monarch of the _aii'. But In’s supremacy in the realm, in which for thousands of years ho has reigned alone is at last challenged. The competitors in the aerial race from Paris to Madrid- had .to

reckon with the Pyreue.ru eagles, which attacked two of them, M. Vccirinc.v, the winner, and M, Elbert, who followed him in his great flight to the Spanish capital. And o no. of the fea-

thc;>.d assailants was routed, if not actually killed, by a fiisihuie from a revolver, bred at close quarters. The episode represents a danger hitherto undreamed of by aviators, but evidently one that will have to be reckoned with. Eagles have , been known to attack grown men on lonely mountains, and an instance of that kind was reported not long ago as having ■occurred in the Andes. Yet the monarch of the air must be, indeed, courageous to hurl himself against an aeroplane travelling at sixty miles an hour, and with a propeller whirling round at countless revolutions per minute. To the aquiline intelligence only one reading of the situation was possible. All knowledge is founded on experience, whether for birds or men, and as aeroplanes are not unlike enormous birds in appearance, the eagles of the Pyrenes no doubt took M. Vodnr.es and M. Gibert for some new kind of birds daring to invade the realm of air with outstretched wings and strangely-whirring tails. An absolute monarch endures no rivals, hut the eagles, alas, were worsted, 1 and the imperial sway which they and their progenitors have exercised for incalculably ages has at last, been successfully challenged bv man. The eagles no doubt got the shock of their lives. But man. the “paragon of animals,” will quickly accommodate himself to In’s new aerial environment. When he goes aeroplaning in future in mountainous country ho ’.-.ill prosaically take a shot gun with him.