MISCELLANY. 



765 



of principles necessary for the develop- 

 ment of the beet ; on the contrary, the 

 reason of the phenomenon is, that the soil 

 is too rich in nitrogenous matters, in conse- 

 quence of the liberal use of manures. 



BallooDS and Carrier-Pigcons. It is re- 

 lated by a writer in the London Quarterly 

 Review for July, that when Pilatre de Ro- 

 zier had descended safely to the earth, 

 after making the first aerial voyage ever 

 undertaken by man, Benjamin Franklin, 

 who at the time (November 21, 1783) was 

 in Paris, on being asked his opinion of the 

 brothers Montgolfier's invention, replied, 

 " A child has just been born." But hith- 

 erto its growth has been extremely slow. 

 Nevertheless, the history of aerial naviga- 

 tion is full of interest, and it is well told by 

 the writer in the QuarterJu. Some of the 

 early objections against ballooning were 

 singular enough. Thus, it was urged that 

 female honor and virtue would be in con- 

 tinual peril, if access could be had by 

 balloons at all hours to the windows of 

 houses ! Politicians objected that, if the 

 path of air were to be made free, all limits 

 of property and frontiers of nations would 

 be destroyed. As a matter of course, aerial 

 navigation was denounced as "impious." 

 And, when the brave Pilatre des Rozier's 

 balloon took fire in the air over the city 

 of Boulogne, and he lost his life, many a 

 one recognized herein the " hand of Provi- 

 dence," just as the peasant-girl, who saw a 

 deal chair fall " from heaven," at once de- 

 cided that it was a part of the household 

 furniture of the angels. In point of fact, 

 Gay-Lussac, who happened at the time to 

 be overhead, had thrown the chair out of 

 his car, to lighten his aerostat. 



During the siege of Paris by the Ger- 

 mans, a balloon post was established in the 

 city. At first there appeared to be innu- 

 merable obstacles in the way of this enter- 

 prise, the chief one being the difficulty of 

 obtaining a sufficient number of aeronauts. 

 In this strait, the aid of seafaring men resi- 

 dent in the city was invoked, as their train- 

 ing had made them familiar with operations 

 and dangers akin to those of ballooning. 

 From September to January, sixty-four bal- 

 loons were sent off, and of these fifty-seven 

 fulfilled their mission. The number of let- 

 ters thus dispatched was 3,000,000. The 



writer in the Quarterly Review mentions 

 one incident connected with these balloon 

 voyages which seems hardly credible : On 

 one. occasion, the crew of a balloon found 

 themselves over the sea, out of sight of 

 land. Seeing vessels they made signals for 

 help, but were not answered, aiid one vessel 

 Jircd on tliem. The men afterward de- 

 scended to the earth in Norway. 



To carry dispatches and letters into 

 Paris, carrier-pigeons were employed. The 

 disj)atches, public and private, were first 

 printed on pages of folio size, 16 of which 

 were placed side by side, forming a large 

 sheet about 54 inches long by 32 wide. 

 This was reduced by photography to -g^y 

 of its original area, the impression being 

 taken on a small pellicle of collodion, two 

 inches long and 1^ wide, and weighing 

 about 5 of a grain ; each contained about 

 2,000 words, or 32,000 words in all, equal 

 to about 58 pages of this magazine. Every 

 pigeon carried twenty of these leaves, which 

 were carefully rolled up and put in a quill. 

 At the Government office in Paris, the quill 

 was cut open, and the collodion leaves care- 

 fully extracted. They were then magnified 

 by an optical apparatus, copied, and sent 

 to their destination. 



mental OTerwork. One of the great 

 evils of modern life, in the estimation of 

 many eminent physicians, is mental over- 

 work. It is asserted that affections of the 

 heart are now more numerous than ever 

 before, that asylums for the insane are be- 

 ing overcrowded, and that nervous disor- 

 ders of every kind are on the increase. 

 What are the signs which indicate impair- 

 ment by overwork ? This question is thus 

 answered in the Sanitary Record: "Over- 

 work," says the Record, "exists when the 

 sense of energy once possessed is distinct- 

 ly impaired ; when it is found an effort to 

 get through what was once a cheerful task ; 

 when what was once found comparatively 

 easy is beginning to be felt a trial ; and 

 above all when errors or omissions, the di- 

 rect outcomes of a flagging and wearied 

 brain, commence to manifest themselves. 

 To spur on an exhausted brain, and by ap- 

 plication and longer hours of toil to com- 

 pel the overtaxed nervous system to com- 

 plete its round of duty, is one of the most 

 disastrous and erroneous measures that can 



