452 
AEllOSTATION. 
and its length forty-six feet and three-quarters, and it was made to 
float with its longest part parallel to the horizon, with a boat of nearly 
seventeen feet long attached to a net that went over it as far as its 
middle. To the boat were annexed wings or oars, in the fornxof an 
umbrella. At twelve o’clock they ascended with four hundred and 
fifty pounds of ballast, and after various manteuvres descended at forty 
minutes past six o’clock at Arras in Artois, having still two hundred 
pounds of their ballast remaining in the boat. Having risen about 
fourteen hundred feet, they perceived stormy clouds, which they en- 
deavoured to avoid ; but the current of the air was uniform, from the 
height of six hundred to four thousand two hundred feet. The baro- 
meter on the coast of the sea was 29.61 inches, and sunk to 23.64 inches. 
They found that by working with their oars, they accelerated their 
course. In the prosecution of their voyage, which was one hundred 
and fifty- miles, they heard two claps of thunder, and the cold, occa- 
sioned by the approach of stormy clouds, made the thermometer fall 
from seventy-seven to fifty-nine degrees, and condensed the indamma- 
ble air in the balloon, so as to make it descend very low. From 
some experiments, they concluded that they were able, by the use of 
two oars, to deviate from the direction of the wind about twenty-two 
degrees. But this experiment was not sufficient to ascertain the effect 
here ascribed to oars. 
The second aerial voyage in England was performed by M. Blan- 
chard, and Mr. Sheldon, professor of anatomy in the Royal Academy, 
the first Englishman who ascended w'ith an aerostatic machine. This 
experiment was performed at Chelsea, on the sixteenth of October. 
The wings used on this occasion seemed to have produced no devia- 
tion in the machine’s track from the direction of the wind. M. 
Blanchard having landed his friend about the distance of fourteen 
miles from Chelsea, proceeded alone with different currents, and 
ascended so high as to experience great difficulty of breathing : a 
pigeon also, which flew away from the boat, laboured for sometime with 
its wings, in order to sustain itself in the rarefied air, and, after w'an- 
dering for a good while, returned, and rested on one side of the boat. 
M. Blanchard perceiving the sea before him, descended near Rurn- 
sey, about seventy- five miles from London, having travelled at the 
rate of near twenty miles an hour. 
On the twelfth of October, Mr. Sadler, of Oxford, made a voyage of 
fourteen miles from that place in seventeen minutes, with an inflam- 
mable air-balloon of his own contrivance and construction. 
The fate of M. P. de Rozier, the first aerial navigator, and of his 
companion M. Remain, has been much lamented. They ascended at 
Boulogne, on the fifteenth of June, with an intention of crossing the 
channel to England. Their machine consisted of a spherical balloon, 
thirty-seven feet in diameter, filled with inflammable air, and under 
this balloon w'as suspended a small montgoifier, or fire-balloon, ten 
feet in diameter. This montgoifier w'as designed for rarefying the 
atmospheric air, and thus diminishing the specific gravity of the whole 
apparatus. For the first tw^enty minutes they seeomd to pursue the 
proper course, but the balloon appeared to be much inflated, and the 
aeronauts seemed anxious to descend. Soon, however, when they 
