4,60 
AEROSTATION^. 
the whole day with a slight headach, brought on by preceding 
fatigues and want of sleep, but though it continued without abatement, 
it was increased by his ascent. 
The ballast being now reduced to thirty-three pounds, and the 
balloon completely distended, it began to drop ; and M. Gay Lussac, 
therefore, only sought to regulate its descent. It subsided very gently 
at the rate of about a mile in eight minutes, and in little more than 
half an hour the anchor touched the ground, and instantly secured 
the car. The voyager alighted with great ease near the hamlet of St. 
Gourgon, about sixteen miles north-west of Rouen. As soon as he 
reached Paris, he hastened to the laboratory of the Polytechnic school 
with his flasks containing the air of the higher regions, and proceeded 
to analyze it in the presence of Thcnard and Gresset. When opened 
under water, the fluid rushed into the vessels, and apparently half 
filled their capacity. The transported air was found, by a very deli- 
cate analysis, to contain exactly the same proportion as that collected 
near the surface of the earth, every 1000 part holding 215 of oxygen. 
From concurring observations, therefore, we may conclude that the 
atmosphere is essentially the same in all situations. 
On the seventh of April, 1806, M. Mosment, an experienced aero- 
naut, undertook an aerial voyage from Lisle ; he ascended at noon, 
waving a flag decorated with the imperial eagle, amid the shouts of 
the assembled spectators. The commencement of his career was so 
rapid as to carry him in a very short time beyond the vision of the 
crowd. During his ascent he dropped a dog, attached to a parachute, 
which came safely to the ground. About one o’clock something was 
observed slowly descending through the atmosphere, which proved, 
on its fall, to be the flag which M. Mosment had carried with him. 
Very soon afterwards a murmur circulated through the crowd that 
the unfortunate adventurer w'as discovered in one of the fosses of the 
city, lifeless, and covered with blood ; which proved but too correct. 
The balloon reached the ground on the same day, at the distance of 
twenty-five leagues from Lisle. The car contained nothing except an 
unloaded, pistol, a little bread, and a piece of meat. M. Garnerin 
ascribes this melancholy disaster to the extreme shallowmess of the 
car, and the too great distance between the cords which attached it 
to the balloon ; and is of opinion that M. Mosment, in leaning over 
the car to drop the animal, had lost his balance, and was thus preci- 
pitated to the earth. 
Another interesting voyage was that undertaken by M. Garnerin at 
eleven o’clock in the evening of the fourth of August, 1807. He ascended 
from Tivoli at Paris, under the Russian flag, as a token of the peace 
that subsisted at that time between France and Russia. His balloon 
was illuminated by twenty lamps, and, to obviate ail danger of com- 
munication betw'een those and the hydrogen gas which it might be 
necessary to discharge in the course of the voyage, the nearest of the 
lamps was fourteen feet distant from the balloon, and conductors 
were provided to carry the gas away in an opposite direction. After 
his ascent, rockets which were let off at Tivoli, seemed to him 
scarcely to rise above the earth, and Paris with all its lamps appeared 
a plane studded with luminous spots. In forty minutes he found him- 
