1864. | Introduction. 11 
cost of his life, and then they follow slowly and cautiously to plant 
the national standard. 
Some day it may be found politic for Governments to take the 
initiative in such matters, and meanwhile exploring expeditions fitted 
out by Societies, and the attempts of isolated travellers, such as those 
who have penetrated into Africa, Australia, and South America, will 
find a prominent and well-merited place in these pages, and we shall 
always be ready to afford them our best aid in their efforts to contri- 
bute to our geographical knowledge. 
As we pass upwards from earth to air, we still find courageous 
adventurers at work in the cause of Science. Here, too, they are 
steadily occupied in the task of tracing the operation of Nature’s laws 
under what we consider abnormal conditions, and, by positive evi- 
dence, supplanting the calculations of experimental meteorologists 
whose feet have never left the solid ground. 
On these subjects our great atmospheric explorer, Mr. Glaisher, has 
accumulated a fund of trustworthy information. He has shown that, 
with an increased altitude, we have not always proportionally diminished 
temperature, but that the latter is sometimes abnormal to the extent 
of from one to twenty degrees, during the ascent ; that the most rapid 
decline takes place after leaving the earth, and that the rate of dimi- 
nution is less in proportion to the increased altitude. The laws of 
hygrometric variation, too, he has studied and defined more clearly ; 
and, not content with purely physical observations, he has contributed 
psychological facts of great interest. It would appear from his expe- 
rience that at great heights every sense becomes more active, and that 
impressions there formed are more firmly fixed upon the mind than 
those received below. No doubt the novelty of the situation has a 
great deal to do with this phenomenon, but altered physical condi- 
tions probably exercise a powerful influence upon the nervous system 
and the mind. 
For the benefit of those who brand men of science as infidels, and 
rail at the “intellectual pride” which, they say, causes them to sub- 
stitute their own knowledge for the truths of religion, we will quote a 
few sentences from a discourse of Mr. Glaisher, on the religious influ- 
ence exercised upon him by his aérial flights, and we hope they may 
have the effect of removing the false impression as to a want of 
reverence in scientific men :—“I have experienced the sense of awe 
and sublimity myself, and have heard it on all sides from aéronauts, 
who have both written and said the same. For my own part, I am an 
overwrought, hard-working man, used to making observations and 
eliminating results, in no way given to be poetical, and devoted to the 
