Up to the present the waste has been so enormous in electric engines as compared with steam engines that steam has held its own in spite of its inferior strength.

What I have invented is, to put it shortly, an electric engine in which there is hardly any waste; and we can now pump water, turn mill-stones, draw railway trains, and lift elevators, at a saving, in fuel and labor, of nearly seventy per cent, of the cost of steam.

And," added Conolly, glancing at Douglas, "as a motor of six-horsepower can be made to weigh less than thirty pounds, including fuel, flying is now perfectly feasible." "What!" said Douglas, incredulously.

"Does not all trustworthy evidence prove that flying is a dream ?" "So it did; because a combination of great power with little weight, such as an eagle, for instance, possesses, could not formerly be realized in a machine.

The lightest known four-horse-power steam engine weighs nearly fifty pounds.