would sail across the ocean either in the air or on the water, go up in the balloon, wait for a bright, sunshiny day and then turn his giant sunglass on the city of London.     Instantaneously, as Mr. Herman is confident, the metropolis and its people would begin to smoke. Soon they would catch fire, and a conflagration would be started which would call the British fleet back home at the double quick. In the ease of London, it is admitted, the prevalence of fogs might make the use of the sunglasues somewhat visionary, but the same objections would not apply to Paris, Berlin or any other of the great world capitals.     Strangely enough, the shortsighted board of ordnance and fortification could not see its way clear to recommending the adoption of this suggestion.     F. Rossi, on the other hand, is an inventor who believes in meeting the foreign powers at their own game and beating them at it. If a big fleet should come over to bombard the eastern coast of the United States, Mr. Rossi suggests that a number of “disappearing warships” be sent out to give them battle. Unfortunately the report of the board does not make it clear just how Mr. Bond proposes to make his vessels disappear. The only plan which appeals to the casual reader as feasible is so to arrange matters that the defending fleet shall sail quietly out and surprise the enemy. Then firing a terrific volume before the hated foe shall have time to load its guns, each of the defending ships should dive underneath the water, disappearing from sight entirely. After remaining beneath the surface until the enemy has again been lulled into a sense of fancied security the fleet

might rise again and deliver another blow. It is charitable to suppose that the board had no clearer idea of the workings of Mr. Roast’s “disappearing warship,” for the only epitaph it has in the annual report are the two words, “Not recommended.”     No less than 13 patriotic inventors, anxious to save their country from all danger of attack by a foreign foe, submitted plays for flying machines, airship, balloons and other devices from which death and destruction could be hurled down on an approaching enemy. One of the airship projectors was a woman, and her plan sounded so feasible that it was referred to the chief signal officer for further investigation. An idea much favored by the inventors was that of a device. guided from the ground, but carrying no men, which would take up a large number of dynamite shells high into the air and travel with them until directly above an enemy’s army or battleships. By an automatic device the bombs would be then released to wreak havoc as they strike the earth or water. Several submitted plans for making and firing aerial torpedoes, which should duplicate on land the work which is done under water by such infernal machines as that which destroyed the Maine. One plan includes the erection of a tall steel tower from the top of which the enemy’s position may be spied out, while at the same time immense aerial torpedoes may he discharged. Many if not most of the airship suggestions were referred for investigation, so it would appear that along this line the ordnance board has strong hopes of success in the future.     But if Boston and other timid localities are not yet