fered. In the same way altar-cloths, reading-desks, upholstery, carpets, and hangings are given by well-meaning people with little thought as to the harmony of the gift with the whole church. The interior is as much the creation of a good architect as the exterior. The question of material from which to build often causes great friction in the committee or between the committee and the builder. The argument of economy can generally be used in favor of materials that are native to the locality. For instance, in a brick-making region much can be said in favor of brick as material, for the walls. There is undoubtedly a popular prejudice against brick for churches, because it is associated with cheap buildings for commercial purposes; but this is a fallacious deduction, and form and permanence are of the greatest moment, and brick is lasting and lends itself to beauty of form and color if skilfully used. On the other hand, a wood church, in spite of the fact that it often lends itself to great beauty of structure and appearance, is in the end only a makeshift. It does not embody the ideal of ecclesiastical architecture as it suggests transitoriness and decay. Stone is generally accepted as the most suitable material for church structures. Whether a native stone shall be chosen or one brought from afar is largely a question of which is best for the given design and site. Often it is ás cheap to bring stone from some great quarry at a distance, where skill and experience produce the best building stones at a minimum price, as it is to open up a local quarry with unskilled labor. The native stone, however, is more apt to harmonize in a rural landscape, and has besides in its favor, the natural instinct to prefer native to foreign products. The wood for interior purposes can be chosen on the same principle of the best for the purpose. Cheap freights and competition have practically eliminated the question of distance from the supply. As for the exterior design, there is no peculiarly American church architectureas has been made evident by the illustrations of colonial and modern churches here presented. Certain localities have followed, as has been pointed out, certain traditions in church architecture because the original settlers came from various Old World places. In New England, for example, the" meeting-house "type prevailed because the settlers brought with them builders' books that contained simple designs for cornices, windows, doorways, etc., that could be made by carpenters and affixed to the plain square building that even the crudest carpenter knew how to construct; or the building was framed and en UNION CHAPEL, COCOANUT GROVE, FLA. closed, by native talent, on lines laid down by home tradition, and the more ornamental parts were imported. In Pennsylvania the red brick church of equal simplicity prevailed for similar reasons, but it is not therefore an architectural tradition that demands perpetuation. The rule that an expert archiwhat tect will follow is to preserve is ecclesiastical and appropriate in local traditions, but throw over entirely those traditions that are reverenced simply because they are old. The Anglican church has developed an ecclesiastical architecture in the rural districts of England that for solidity, beauty, and fitness can be well imitated here. So with the Scotch Presbyterians, the French Catholics, and other denominations. A sympathetic architect will instinctively make churches, for various denominations historically and artistically, expressions of their faith and their traditions-will suit his design to the conditions imposed and will add, what makes it architecture-the impress of his own personality. THE study of aerial photography has been intermittent; a few investigators with large patience and means pursued it awhile and their example has infected others who have sought to emulate them; but all sorts of obstacles have presented themselves to delay and discourage effort. Sending up a camera and taking pictures seems a simple enough thing to do until you try it, when surprisingly involved mechanical difficulties present themselves. Progress has been made, however, due largely to the advances made in the art of photography itself, and to the development of a simple and easily available lifting power. Attempts to take photographs from great heights with the aid of balloons have been made for a number of years, but the difficulties and large expense involved in this method have prevented those general experiments that would have given aërial photography a wider popular interest and VOL. XXII.-64 brought it into service as a valuable aid in military and other work. M. Nadar, of Paris, was one of the earliest experimenters in aërial photography. As early as 1858 he took a bird's-eye view of the French capital and environs with a camera fixed to the side of his car. Twenty-five years later, greatly aided by the use of the improved dry-plate process, another Frenchman, M. Desmaret, made a series of interesting views from a balloon. One of the most ingenious attempts recorded was made by M. Denesse, who invented a quaint rocket camera which was to be sent aloft until the projectile exhausted its energy, when an automatic parachute was to spread itself to make the descent and trip the camera as it gracefully and gently came to earth. About 1888 Herr Meydenbaur, in Germany, perfected a camera which was enclosed in a small captive balloon, the lens only being exposed, and in 1889 and 1891 lieutenants of the Austrian Army secured some fine views from both free and captive balloons at altitudes varying from 2,500 to 5,000 feet. A novel experiment made in 1881 was with a captive balloon camera that had a revolving drum holding four plates. Two insulated wires led to the camera through the cable that held the balloon, by means The first aerial photograph taken in Am- of which electric currents were sent, one erica, if not the first successful one made in to turn the drum, the other to operate the the world, was on a wet plate from a balloon camera. The results were successful, but over the city of Boston in 1862. J. W. the death of the inventor, Mr. W. B. Wood From a Kite Photograph. Taken by W. A. Eddy. The view includes the City Hall, New York, and a portion of lower Black, the operator, says that the leaking of gas from the balloon destroyed all the plates but one. John G. Doughty made a balloon trip from Winsted to Windsor, Conn., in 1885, during which he took photographs. These pictures included several cloud effects and landscapes. He found that the revolving of his balloon made successful work exceedingly difficult. In one view taken by him through a hole in the bottom of the car at a height of a mile and a half, the shadows cast gave a picture "with some resemblance to the telescopic view of the moon," but another from an altitude of three-quarters of a mile showed very plainly "the serpentine course of the Connecticut south of Hartford." In bury, put an end to To-day the balloon is a part of the equipment of all the great armies of the world, and a number of interesting aërial photographs have been taken abroad with their aid during the past year. That the camera will play an important part in the warfare of the future is a foregone conclusion, but up to the present time the one thing that has been needed to make it more useful and quickly available in aërial work has been a simple and reliable lifting power, and this has apparently been found in the perfected form of the tailless kite. This kite, or a train of them, to which a camera can be fixed, will do the work of a balloon and at no risk to human life. If an enemy cannot easily hit a balloon, how much less chance will there be of injury resulting to so small an object as a camera suspended a thousand feet or more in the air. Recent trials in Austria-Hungary and in England have shown that rifle-bullets have little effect upon captive balloons, hundred feet ordinary shells are almost useless and even shrapnel are surprisingly ineffective. There has been no war of sufficient magnitude since kite photography has been advanced to its present state to thoroughly test its usefulness for military purposes; and may such a war never occur, but may the art continue to be one of peace! Kites have been used for more than a century by scientists, who have sought by their aid to solve the problems of the atmosphere and the shifting clouds, and the renewed and wider interest in their use now is due to the stability, lifting power, and greater altitudes attainable with the new forms. Everyone knows the story of Benjamin Franklin's famous kite-flying, by means of which he brought electricity to earth and confined it in a bottle. His account of his electrical experiments, barely filling a column, appeared in the Gentlemen's Magazine for October, 1752. A Tandem Flight of Five Parakites. About 1837, the Franklin Kite Club, of Philadelphia, attempted meteorological ob servations with the aid of kites, and W. R. Birt, of the Kew Observatory, made some interesting investigations with their aid in 1847. In 1882 Admiral Bach, of the British Navy, used kites for ascertaining temperatures over the waters of Hudson Strait, and the flight of a train of kites in England by Mr. F. D. Archibald, each kite having its individual line attached to the main line, so that by a free radius of cordage they might indicate the direction of the wind at the varying altitudes in which they flew, resulted in some valuable meteorological information. The unique invention of the cellular kite by Lawrence Hargrave, in 1882, excited a very general interest, and his experiments have stimulated the whole fraternity of contemporary scientific kite-flyers. Mr. W. A. Eddy, using an improved form of the so-called Malay kite which is evidently derived from a Javanese form, has made many interesting experiments at Bayonne, N. J., and at the Blue Hill Observatory, Readville, Mass. During the past year Lieutenant J. E. Maxfield, of the United States Signal Service, has used the multiplane kite invented by the famous engineer, Octave Chanute, with a view to testing it for purposes of observation, and the War Department has had similar trials made at Governor's Island, New York. Lieutenant H. D. Wise and Mr. Eddy have tried kites as a means of lifting electrical devices for signalling to distant points, and the former has only lately raised himself forty feet in the air by their aid. In England Lieutenant Baden |