I N TO THE AT BIOsrilER E 
395 
easily catch the insect by following its progress : it moved 
in a plane parallel to the point of departure. 
On the 4th August 1822, at 3 p. m., thermometer 66% 
the ascent was slow and beautiful, the little aeronaut rising 
regularly in the vertical plane. It was distinctly perceived 
from the steady fixation of the eye, and favourable angle 
of vision, until it had attained an elevation of 30 feet at 
least, and was finally lost in the vanishing point of eleva- 
tion. 
A variety of other phasnomena unite their testimony in 
favour of the conclusions which I have formed, and from 
what I consider the direct method of induction. 
Were the thread not electrical, I do not see how it 
should be propelled through the atmosphere in the vertical 
plane, and remain there, contrary to the laws of gravitation. 
It is indeed remarkable, that the threads should remain 
in the precise plane in which they are propelled, nor ever 
swerve from that path. The constant relative separation 
finds an analogy in similarly electrified pith-balls, or the 
divergence of the filaments in the case of a glass plume, 
&c., placed on the conductor of an excited electrical ma- 
chine. The undulations of an agitated atmosphere disturb 
rather than favour the ascent of the little aeronaut. The 
electric or calorific state of the atmosphere will be found 
always to modify the pheenomena. The transit of the thread 
through a resisting medium, without its suffering deflection 
in its path, proves it to be imbued with a power superior 
to, and able to combat with or overcome, that resistance *. 
The instantaneousness of the propulsion of the projectile 
• The friction sustained in its sudden propulsion through the resisting 
atmosphere would alone be capable of investing it with electricity. I have 
seen, in the case of a fibre of very fine-spun glass suddenly drawn upward, 
that it continued vertical^ and I found it electrical. 
