THE CONQUEST OF TIME AND SPACE 



attempts and efiForts were made to pass laws forbidding 

 them. But no such demand or suggestion came from 

 the balloonists themselves. They could point to the 

 fact that, while as yet the balloon had been of no im- 

 portance commercially, it had at least been turned to 

 some account in the field of science, which was simply a 

 stepping-stone to commerical advancement. It had 

 been the means of settling forever the question of tem- 

 perature and rarefaction at different altitudes, besides 

 numerous less important although no less interesting 

 subjects. 



While it was true that many of the experiments of the 

 aeronauts had added largely to human knowledge, some 

 of them were both dangerous and foolhardy. An ex- 

 hibition of this kind of folly was given by the Frenchman, 

 Testu-Bressy, who, wishing to test his theory that large 

 animals would bleed from the nose at a much lower 

 elevation than man, despite the thicker consistency of 

 their blood, made an ascent mounted on the back of a 

 horse. On this occasion the aeronaut did not^even take 

 the simple precaution of tying the horse's feet to the car ; 

 and what seems most remarkable, the animal made the 

 journey without moving or showing any sign of fear. 



The time was at hand, however, when Montgolfier, 

 who had always maintained that the true usefulness of 

 the balloon would be in warfare, was given the oppor- 

 tunity of seeing his contention verified. On the break- 

 ing out of the French Revolution, balloon corps were at 

 once pressed into the service of the army. Napoleon 

 Bonaparte carried with him some balloons on his 

 Egyptian campaign, partly for the purpose of making 



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