The Lake County star. [volume] (Chase, Mich.) 1873-current, 1875-06-17

Professor John Wise, the aerOnaut,
writes as follows to the Philadelphia
Bulletin:
"The ascension made OH Friday last
with Mr.. o. Schnecks st. Charles Bal
loon,' in which l was accompanied by
Charles @. Cresson, the same person who
accompanied me last October, in the
Franklin balloon, which ascended from
the roof of the building at the corner of
Market and Thirteenth streets, was
purely for scientific purposes. We
started off under a meridian sun, and in
three minutes rose 5000 feet. Notwith-
standing this velocity of ascent, the
motion of itself was imperceptible 80
smooth did the balloon cleave the air.
The transition so suddenly from solid
earth to the fields of cloud land was suf-
ficient to awaken all the dormant SEN
sibilities of the soul. While my COM
panion was descanting upon the beauty
of the real estate homesteads dotting the
country all aroand beneath us, called
his attention, or rather the balloon did,
to arother consideration. The sun
having full play upon the air vessel and
expanding its gas, caused the carburetted
hydrogen to pour down upon us cloud
of death, although we were twelve feet
below the muzzle of the balloon.
"Now, Mr.. Cresson, / remarked, this
makes it plain to you how the Zenith
party in France, the other day, had two
of their comrades smothered in the
hydrogenated atmosphere. You are
already suffering, I see, and l am not
very comfortable myself; my pulse is off
on the double. quick, and you are getting
pale, so l will put stop to this part of
our experimentation by opening the
valve
"We had now attained an altitude of
$500 feet. Had the muzzle of the bal
loon been close on our heads, as was the
case il the Zenith balloon, we could not
have lived many minutes in such an
asphyxiated atmosphere. The throwing
overheard of an eighty-pound weight
gas-bag by one of the Zenith party, done,
no doubt, under confused mental
action, brought about by the inhalation
of noxious gas, explains the cause of
the disaster. The rarified condition of
the atmosphere at an altitude of 10000
feet will not cause death of itself. Green,
the noted English aeronaut, went up to
that height without injury, though he
used bag of pure air to inhale from.
"The atmosphere was much perturbed
on Friday. At 5000 and 5000 feet up it
was fuctuating to and fro, and l am
more convinced than ever that we are
yet to find solution of our remarkable
seasons, from outside pressure upon our
earths elastic shell of air, a pressure
from planetary perturbations in con-
functions, quadratures and appositions.
Were it not for outside interferences our
seasons would necessarily have to be the
same from year to year, assuming that the
earth is regular i'm its motions and its con-
ditiOns of temperature rs to equatorial
heat and polar cold. Our planet is sub
iect to direct pressure from Venus and
Mars, and they i'm turn from Mercury
and Jupiter. The photosphere is as sub
ject to disturbances by pressure as is our
and while the cosmogony is
a harmonious sum total, its details are
the differentiations of evolution through
motion. Future experiments will be
directed to that line of investi-
CATION.
While we were suspended over the |
northern part of our built-up city the
scene underneath us was peculiarly
lively under the MONDAY sun. Every
thing shone out in radiant beauty, shim-
mering in the profusion of spangles and
Jewels.
"The transparency of the Delaware
was very marked as we stood almost, if
not quite, still over it for some minutes,
and until a gentle, spasmodic puff of air
sent us over the sandy plains of jersey"