dim. He could not see to read his thermometer, or distinguish the hands

of his watch. He noticed the mercury of the barometer, however, and saw that a height of 29,000 feet had been reached, and the balloon was still rising. What followed next had best be told in Mr. Glaisher’s own words:--

“Shortly after I laid my arm upon the table, possessed of its full vigour, but on being desirous of using it, I found it useless. Trying to move the other arm, I found it powerless also. Then I tried to shake myself and succeeded, but I seemed to have no limbs. In looking at the barometer my head fell over my left shoulder. I struggled and shook my body again, but could not move my arms. Getting my head upright for an instant only, it fell on my right shoulder; then I fell backwards, my body resting against the side of the car, and my head on the edge. I dimly saw Mr. Coxwell and endeavoured to speak, but could not. In an instant intense darkness overcame me; but I was still conscious, with as active a brain as at the present moment while writing this. I thought I had been seized with asphyxia, and believed I should experience nothing more, as death would come unless we speedily descended. Other thoughts were entering my mind, when I suddenly became unconscious as on going to sleep.” Mr. Glaisher adds: “I cannot tell anything of the sense of hearing, as no sound reaches the ear to break the perfect stillness and silence of the regions between six and seven miles above the earth.”

Meanwhile, as stated, Mr. Coxwell was up in the ring, trying to secure the valve-line, which had become twisted. To do this he had taken off a pair of thick gloves he had been wearing, and in the tremendous cold of that awful region the moment his bare hands rested on the metal of the ring they became frost-bitten and useless. Looking down, he saw Mr. Glaisher in a fainting condition, and called out to him, but received no answer. Thoroughly alarmed by this time, he tried to come down to his companion’s assistance; but now _his_ hands also had become lifeless, and he felt unconsciousness rapidly stealing over him.

Quickly realising that death to both of them would speedily follow if the balloon continued to ascend, Mr. Coxwell now endeavoured to pull the valve-line; but he found it impossible to do so with his disabled hands. Fortunately he was a man of great bodily strength, as well as of iron nerve, and by a great effort he succeeded in catching the valve-line _in his teeth_. Then, putting his whole weight upon it, he managed to pull open the valve, and hold it until the balloon took a decided turn downwards. This saved them. As lower regions were reached, where the air was denser, Mr. Glaisher began to recover, and by the time they came to the ground neither of these two brave men were any the worse for their extraordinary experience.

Neither Mr. Glaisher or Mr. Coxwell were able to note the exact elevation when they were at their greatest height; but from several circumstances they were convinced that it must have been 36,000 or 37,000 feet, or fully _seven miles high_. Later aeronauts have been inclined to doubt if this surmise can be quite correct; but whether it is so or not is of no great moment, for this great balloon ascent will always stand unrivalled in the history of ballooning. Since that day nearly as great, or perhaps even greater, heights have been reached in balloons; but nowadays those who attempt to ascend to great elevations always provide themselves, before they start, with cylinders of compressed oxygen gas. Then when the atmosphere aloft becomes so thin and rare as to make breathing difficult, they begin to fill their lungs with the life-giving gas from the cylinders, and at once recover.

After this perilous voyage Glaisher and Coxwell made several other scientific balloon ascents. They met with various experiences. On one occasion, during a lofty ascent, they lost sight of the earth above the clouds for a while, but, the mist suddenly breaking, they found themselves on the point of drifting out to sea. Not a moment was to be lost, and both men hung on to the valve-line until it cut their hands. The result was a tremendously rapid descent. The balloon fell four and a quarter miles in less than a quarter of an hour, covering the last two miles in only four minutes. They reached earth close to the shore, and were fortunate to escape with only a few bruises, though all the instruments were once more broken in the shock.

Mr. Glaisher was able to make many interesting notes of the condition of the winds and clouds at high levels. He observed how frequently different currents of air are blowing aloft in different directions at the same time. These differing winds affect the shape of the clouds among which they blow. High above the ground he frequently met with a warm wind blowing constantly from the south-west; and he believed that it is largely due to this mild air-stream passing always overhead that England enjoys such much less rigorous winters than other countries that lie as far north of the equator. This mildness of our climate has long been attributed to the Gulf Stream, that warm current of the sea which sweeps up from the tropics past our shores. But it may well be that there is besides an “Aerial Gulf Stream,” as Mr. Glaisher calls it, blowing constantly above our heads, which also serves to warm the air, and make our winter climate mild and moist.

One fact these experiments seemed to establish was, that when rain is falling from an overcast sky, there is always a higher layer of clouds overhanging the lower stratum. Nothing surprised Mr. Glaisher more than the extreme rapidity with which the whole sky, up to a vast height, could fill up entirely with clouds at the approach of a storm. Another point noted was that, when a wind is blowing, the upper portion of the current always travels faster than that next the ground. This is due, of course, to the obstacles the wind meets as it sweeps over the earth, and which check its onward progress.

These, and very many other facts of the greatest interest to the meteorologist, were the outcome of Mr. Glaisher’s experiments. Later voyages of a similar kind have added greatly to our knowledge of the condition of the air, and it seems certain that in the future the balloon will be much more used by scientific men, and by its means they will be able to predict the weather more accurately and further ahead than at present, and learn many other things of which we are now in ignorance.