364 
NATURE 
| Sept. 4, 1873 
mixed ina stout test tube and confined by a greased cork. This 
was placed upright on a little wooden stand, and kept in its place 
by a brass clip. About an inch of magnesium ribbon was sus- 
pended in a small tin shade by means of a wire clip. The 
magnesium being placed near the tube and lighted, the gases 
united with a report, jerking the cork to the ceiling, but in no 
case breaking the tube. W. 
A NEW BUBALE, FROM ABYSSINIA 
eo British Museum has just received a series of skins 
of a new Bubale from Abyssinia called Tora. It is 
like the Hartibeest for having a white patch on the rump, 
and white inside the ears, but it is without any black on 
the face or on the outer side of the limbs. It is of a 
bright pale bay colour, with black tuft on the tail, and the 
horns are much more slender than in the Hartibeest. I 
propose to call it Alcephalus tora. 
J. E. Grey 
FROM AMERICA TO ENGLAND BY BALLOON 
See appears every likelihood that before the end 
of the year a feat will be attempted which seems to 
have been first seriously proposed thirty years ago by 
Prof. Wise, an American aéronaut, who is now making 
preparations to cross the Atlantic to England in a 
monster balloon, The American correspondent of the 
Standard has given full details of the elaborate construc- 
tion of this balloon, and states the reasons which inspire 
Prof. Wise with unhesitating confidence that he will be 
able successfully to accomplish his aérial voyage. 
The balloon, when completed, will be 160 ft. high, and 
the globe will be over 1ooft.in diameter. It will be able 
to lift from the ground, including its own weight, 14,000 
pounds, and will have a net carrying capacity for passen- 
gers and ballast of 6,900 pounds. It will contain 600,000 
cubic feet of illuminating gas, though only 400,000 feet 
will be put into it to allow for expansion in the higher 
regions of the atmosphere. The other details of con- 
struction are most elaborate, and every precaution seems 
to be taken to insure success and to provide for the safety 
of the four persons who are bold enough to risk their lives 
to gratify their curiosity and endeavour to increase the 
sum of human knowledge. The four voyagers will be 
Prof. Wise, Mr. Donaldson, an agent of the Dazly Graphic, 
and a skilled mariner—for a copper-fastened cedar life- 
boat, 22 ft. long and 43 ft. beam, forms part of the appurte- 
nances, 
The hypothesis on which the enterprise is pro- 
jected, is that there is a prevailing east-going current 
of air at an attainable elevation, in which a balloon 
can pass eastward from the American continent to 
Europe. The current is believed to be half-a-mile 
or more above the surface of the earth, and to move at 
the rate of from 50 to 150 miles an hour. It was a 
knowledge of this current that made Mr, Charles Green, 
the celebrated English aéronaut, say, in 1840, that he 
should start from America rather than from England to 
traverse the Atlantic ina balloon. The cause of the 
current is less definitely known than the fact. A French 
savant attributes it to “a decrease of participation in the 
rapidity of the rotary motion of theearth.” Prof. Wise 
believes that this upper current of air, in the temperate 
zones, moves from west to east, because of the mingling 
of the south-west and north-west trade-winds in their 
circuits, in accordance with the laws of temperature and 
the aérial motion of the earth. The two currents, he 
believes, slide over each other, and the balloonist who 
knows his business can strike such a point as will carry 
him eastward, as it were, between them. That is to say, 
the zone lying between the 35th and 36th parallels is “a 
nodal zone,” in which the south-west and north-west 
winds induce an intermediate current which moves nearly 
due east. In this highway the motion is about a hundred 
miles an hour. 
The theory of the east-going current seems to be pretty 
well admitted. The direct experience which bears most 
strongly upon it is limited. There are three memorable 
balloon trips which are noteworthy. The current seems 
to set persistently eastward, deflécted slightly towards the 
north by the rush of equatorial air towards the north. 
Prof. Wise, in 1859, in his trip from St. Louis to Jeffer- 
son county, in the State of New York, found the current 
almost due east ; he travelled in balloon 1,156 miles in 
19 hours. The speed here was only 61 miles an hour ; 
but this can be accounted for. The great balloon voyage 
made by Nadar from Paris to Hanover was almost due 
eastward. This journey of 600 miles was made in about 
six hours—about a hundred miles an hour, although it 
was over the uneven surface of the Continent, diversified 
by hill, vale, stream, and so on. In the trip of Mr. 
Green, from London to Wellburg, in Nassau, the journey 
was about 600 miles, and was performed at the rate of 
about a hundred miles an hour, and there were the British 
Channel and other irregularities in the way of smooth 
sailing. 
On the other hand, however, Mr. Glaisher in his experi- 
ments, in consequence of what Mr. Green had stated with 
regard to the constant prevalence of a current from the 
west, paid special attention to this point, and in his 
reports to the British Association in 1863 and 1864,* 
collected together the different directions in which the 
balloon had moved at different heights in his several 
ascents. From these it appears that the direction of the 
wind was quite as capricious at heights exceeding 5,000 ft. 
as it is on the surface of the earth, In Mr, Glaishers 
winter ascents he did generally meet with a current from 
the south-west, certainly ; but the number of such ascents 
was not great, and they were not to sufficient elevations. 
to afford very trustworthy results. It is certain, however, 
that if there existed over England anything like a current 
of air constant in direction, it must have manifested itself 
distinctly in the course of Mr. Glaisher’s thirty ascents, 
in all of which the direction of the wind at different eleva- 
tions was a subject of careful observation. 
Again, Prof. Newton of Yale College has written a 
letter to a recent number of the Dazly Graphic, in which, 
from the observed behaviour of the luminous trains some- 
times left by the brighter meteors at from forty to seventy 
miles high, he draws certain inferences which do not seem 
altogether favourable to Prof. Wise’s theories. What 
these inferences are will be seen from the conclusion of 
his letter :— 
“We have, then, at the do¢/om of the atmosphere, in- 
constant winds. We have. just above us strata of air 
moving in diverse directions, for the lower clouds may 
move one way, the upper clouds another, while at the 
surface the winds may perhaps blowin a third. At two 
islands at short distances from each other we often have 
different winds. , 
“Again, we have for air near the top of the atmo- 
sphere, at least so high up that the density is exceedingly 
small, this fact, that lines (usually inclined to the horizon) 
only five or ten miles long almost always have their ends 
in air that is moving in different directions, 
“ Between the highest cloud and the lowest meteor trains — 
lies an unknown region, It may be that here are uniform 
westerly winds. In the absence of direct observation 
neither this nor the contrary may be asserted. But it 
seems to me more rational to suppose that the complex 
system of currents at the bottom of the atmosphere is in © 
direct connection with that at the top, and that there is a 
like complex system of currents and winds throughout 
the intermediate space. Of course, the general drifting of 
the air in the temperate zone to the east is unquestioned. 
Prof. Joseph Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution, 
* British Association Reports, 863, p. 507, and 1864, p. 313. 
