On my practice flights in a hydroaeroplane over San Diego Bay, I noticed on several occasions that pelicans and sea gulls and even wild ducks got in my path, and I was sometimes obliged to change my course in order to avoid the slow-flying fowl. It occurred to me that with a net affixed to the forward part of the planes it would have been an easy matter to run down and bag a pelican, and possibly a sea gull. The ducks are too quick to be caught by an aeroplane, as yet. Chasing ducks in an aeroplane and catching them in a net would be about as thrilling a sport as one can imagine. Perhaps when the killing of wild fowl with guns shall have palled on sportsmen, we shall see the method of "netting" them with an aeroplane come into use. Something after the manner of scientists who hunt the lepidoptera.
Mrs. Lillian Janeway Platt Atwater, of New York, while taking instructions in the operation of the hydroaeroplane at North Island, early in 1912, tried my new method of catching seabirds. She asked Lieut. J. W. McClaskey, instructor at the Curtiss school, to take out the hydroaeroplane, with her as a passenger, and attempt to catch a pelican or gull with a net. The instructor promptly agreed and for almost half an hour the big hydroaeroplane with Lieut. McClaskey and Mrs. Atwater chased pelicans and sea gulls up and down the bay. They discontinued the hunt only when a large pelican barely escaped becoming entangled in the propeller, which would have smashed it and possibly caused an accident. On another occasion Mrs. Atwater did actually succeed in catching a gull while flying with her husband.
Shooting rabbits from an aeroplane would be comparatively easy. I came to this conclusion while flying over North Island, which is covered with weeds and sagebrush for the most part, with hundreds of jack-rabbits and cottontails living there. At first these rabbits were terribly frightened by the aeroplane and ran in all directions to escape. They soon became used to the sight, however, and would watch the aeroplane with a great deal of curiosity. One of the big jack-rabbits, either from fright or curiosity, waited too long to get out of the way of Harry Harkness in his Antoinette, when he made a rather abrupt descent, and it was cut in two by the propeller.
MAIL-CARRYING
One of the most important special uses to which the aeroplane is particularly adapted is for carrying the mail. Royal mail was first actually handled at Allahabad in India last summer, during which over 6,000 letters were transferred. This service was planned to prove the great value of an aeroplane post during war time to a besieged town. A mail route via aeroplane was established on trial between London and Windsor in England, which carried several tons of mail matter. And in this country last fall Postmaster-General Frank H. Hitchcock and Captain Paul Beck, U. S. A., inaugurated the first aerial postal service regularly established in the United States, over a route between the Aero Club of America's flying grounds at Nassau Boulevard on Long Island, and Mineola, L. I. A picturesque account of this little episode is given by Frank O'Malley, who wrote:
"The flying events of the day at the Nassau Boulevard aviation meet came to an end in a hubbub of joyousness among 1,500 spectators on the grounds.
"Lieutenant Milling had busted the American record and was still flying for the world's record when a tall, youngish man decked out in a blue serge suit, and a gray cap, climbed into the Curtiss machine driven by Captain Paul Beck of the army.
"'The Hon. Frank H. Hitchcock, Postmaster-Gen'rul of the whole United States,' the megaphone man began to holler,'will now fly to Mineola with Captain Beck to deliver the mail. Postmaster-Gen'rul Hitchcock of the United States will carry the mail-bag on his knees and drop the bag at Mineola into a circle in which will be the Postmaster-Gen'rul of I mean the Postmaster of Mineola. Ladies and gentlemen, Postmaster-Gen'rul Hitchcock.' (Much applause.)
"Mr. Hitchcock wasn't around to hear all this and so didn't lift his gray cap in acknowledgment. He was far out on the field with Attorney-General Wickersham and Captain Beck. Post Office Inspector Doyle handed the Postmaster-General a mail bag containing one thousand, four hundred and forty postcards and one hundred and sixty-two letters, and Captain Beck and the Postmaster-General hiked off in a northerly direction for the high spots,
"The Curtiss circled three-quarters of the field and then climbed rapidly until it was three hundred or four hundred feet above the south end of the track. Ovington, who had also got under way with a second bag of mail in his monoplane, shot up into the same acre of sky occupied by Captain Beck and Mr. Hitchcock and shot eastward as a track finder for Captain Beck's machine.