330 THE BORDERLAND OF SCIENCE. 



parachute, as well as a degree of oscillation which 

 seriously risks its structure, besides impairing its 

 supporting power since this power would obviously 

 act most effectively if the span of the parachute 

 remained horizontal throughout the descent. The 

 following account of Grarnerin's descent, in 1797, 

 illustrates the foregoing remarks: 'In 1797,' says 

 Mr. Manley Hopkins, ' Grarnerin constructed a parachute, 

 by which he descended from a balloon, at an elevation 

 of 2,000 feet. The descent was perilous, for the 

 parachute failed, for a time, to expand ; and after it 

 had opened, and the immediate fears of the immense 

 concourse which had assembled in Paris to witness the 

 attempt, had been removed, the oscillations of the car, 

 in which Grarnerin was seated, were so violent as to 

 threaten either to throw him out, or, on arriving at 

 the ground, to dash him out with violence. He 

 escaped, however ! " We notice the same circum- 

 stances in the narrative of poor Cooking's disastrous 

 attempt in 1837. 'When the cords which sustained 

 the parachute were cut, it descended with dangerous 

 rapidity, oscillating fearfully, and at last the car broke 

 away from the parachute, and Mr. Cocking was pre- 

 cipitated to the ground, from a height of about one 

 hundred feet.' 



But apart from these considerations, the parachute 

 affords no evidence whatever of the increased sustaining 

 power of the air on bodies which traverse it rapidly in 

 a more or less horizontal direction. The parachute 

 descends, and descends quickly: we have to inquire 



