ARTIFICIAL FLIGHT. 533 



the last century up to the commencement of the Victorian 

 era that balloons occupied a large share of public attention, 

 not only in this country but still more so in France. Many 

 balloonists made large fortunes in those days, and innu- 

 merable impossible schemes and fantastic devices were 

 designed to gull the public; among these one of the most gro- 

 tesque was an aerial vessel called the Minerva, with which 

 Robertson proposed to make a tour of the world. The 

 figure given in Astra Castra represents a globular balloon 

 surmounted by a gigantic model of a cock birci, and sus- 

 pended from it was to be a ship in case the balloon should 

 come to grief and the party should have to sail across the 

 sea. Attached by ropes below the ship was an enormous 

 barrel containing provisions for the voyage, and near by a 

 little house was suspended like a bird-cage for any ladies 

 who might wish to accompany the expedition. Quite 

 recently, we believe that a similar project of a balloon 

 carrying a ship for use in emergency has been propounded 

 in an American newspaper. 



The earliest convert from the plus loiird to the plus 

 Icger school was the well-known aeronaut Blanchard, who 

 shortly before Montgolfier's discovery had designed a most 

 grotesque flying machine. The aeronaut sat in a chair and 

 by working levers with his arms and legs raised and lowered 

 four large paddles which were supposed to lift the machine. 

 M. Tissandier's quaint figure of the machine is embellished 

 by the addition of a small boy in the stern of the machine 

 blowing a trumpet. The apparatus was designed, but 

 Blanchard expected to get too little recompense for his 

 experiments, and he was going to leave the country when 

 the Abbe Devrunay kept him back and recommended him 

 to take to balloons, which accordingly he did with success. 

 Later on, one Austrian named Jacob Deeghen made a few 

 experiments with a kind of double parachute, which he 

 attempted to work up and down for the purpose of raising 

 himself in the air ; but he found that it would not quite lift 

 his weight, so he attached it to a balloon and thus practically 

 joined the ranks of the plus leger y^-Axly . Deeghen took the 

 parachute to Paris and was to have exhibited it there* but 



