science has
registered those of Barral and Bixio, two men whose aeronautic
achievements have enriched meteorology with more important discoveries,
perhaps, than any we have yet mentioned.

These gentlemen had conceived the project of rising by means of a
balloon to a great height, in order to study, with the assistance of the
very best instruments in use in their day, a multitude of phenomena then
imperfectly known. The subjects to which they were specially to direct
their attention, were the law of the decrease of temperature in progress
upwards, the discovery of whether the chemical composition of the
atmosphere is the same throughout all its parts, the comparison of the
strength of the solar rays in the higher regions of the atmosphere
and on the surface of the earth, the ascertaining whether the light
reflected and transmitted by the clouds is or is not polarised, &c.

All the preparations having been made in the garden of the Observatory
at Paris, the ascent took place on the 29th of June, 1850, at 10.27
a.m., the balloon being filled with hydrogen gas. The first ascent was a
signal failure. It was found that the weather being bad, the envelope
of the balloon was torn in several places, and had to be mended in all
haste. Immediately preceding the moment of ascent, a torrent of rain
fell. But the voyagers were determined to ascend. They placed themselves
in the car, and, when thrown off from the fastenings, they rose through
the air with the speed of an arrow. The height to which the balloon
reached made it suddenly dilate, and the network, which was much too
small, was stretched to the utmost. The balloon was forced down upon
them by the dilation, and one of them, in the endeavour to work the
valve, made a rent in the lower part of the globe, from which the gas
escaping almost over the heads of the travellers, nearly choked them.
The escape of the gas had the usual result--the balloon descended
rapidly, and fell in a vineyard near Lugny, where they were found by
the peasants holding on to the trees by their legs and arms, and thus
attempting to stop the horizontal advance of the car. They had risen to
the height of over 17,000 feet, and they had descended from this height
in from four to five minutes.

For all practical purposes, the ascent was a failure, and the aeronauts
immediately commenced preparations for a new voyage, which took place a
month afterwards. They rose to very great altitudes, but experienced