Show THE DANGERS OF ballooning IT seems as if the heights of air and the depths of water are to be viewed by the human family like tile the promised land was at a distance at least for some time to come ever since Mong montgolfier put into practical shape his conception of an aerial navigator and demonstrated its practicability by actual flight the race has been agitating the question of elaborating and making useful the principle flying machines have been numerous but not one of them has ever made even a short trip airships the grand consummation aimed at have been perfected so far as their construction was concerned but with a very few exceptions have proved flat failures the money expended in getting them built being so much thrown away balloons can nearly always make a single short shore trip the motion being per estly vertical going up and coming down except when operated on by winds or air currents and thus thua for navigation purposes they are next to useless since the voyager would be and always is subject to the caprice of the element in ia which he sails he might prepare for a trip east basing his calculations upon the prevailing direction of the wind on the earth and at a height of a few hundred feet find himself in a current which sweeps him directly to the opposite and he cannot prevent it it is also the fact that balloon amen ascensions even when the conditions are favorable are the most dangerous of all the methods of motion ever utilized and add this too when a mere ascent for pleasure is the object A very slight defect in the fabric composing the globe of its workmanship will cause it to collapse at an altitude sufficiently high the air becoming more rarified ramified and there being consequently less pressure from without to counteract the pressure from within when a collapse occurs death is inevitable not an easy ordinary death but one accompanied byall by all the terrors pro preceding a fall from a giddy height the gradual loss of breath and consciousness ness as the victim is precipitated to the ground and a crushed unrecognizable being is found in I 1 place of the one who temporarily set aside the great law of grafft tion A collapse is only one of many dangers there is the case of tia sai sandier adler and two scientific compan ions in paris a few years year ago sago they ascended to a distance of five and a 9 1 fourth miles the limit of the baa bal loons power and on returning to earth two were dead and the third J died shortly after the air at that altitude was so unsubstantial that asphyxiation occurred with the ra W sult suit stated then there is the dao ger of the gas which is always 00 8 close by reaching the car of vio lent storms etc j the sad story of aeronaut hogan who had constructed a kind of air ship and last week took a trip in it being carried out in the ocean then as supposed falling to the tb water through the gas giving out oa and himself being drowned 10 but an illustration of a daw dan ger which we are not often call ed upon to record the practical 1 facts of readers of the NEW have been able to follow the stances as well as we have and w ap thus understand that a man mail of j thorough experience who may h aft t made a great number of ascension ascensiO J and al trips tripe without receiving slightest injury is almost as muck vw exposed to the perils of the ments as a beginner would woud be |