next trial also commenced well, with an easy
rise to a height of some thirty feet. At that point, however, the tail
broke with a snap, and the machine, pitching over, fell a complete
wreck. Mr. Pilcher was found insensible, with his thigh broken, and
though no other serious injury was apparent, he succumbed two days
afterwards without recovering consciousness. It was surmised that
shrinkage of the canvas of the tail, through getting wet, had strained
and broken its bamboo stretcher.

This autumn died Gaston Tissandier, at the age of fifty-six; and in the
month of December, at a ripe old age, while still in full possession of
intellectual vigour, Mr. Coxwell somewhat suddenly passed away. Always
keenly interested in the progress of aeronautics; he had but recently,
in a letter to the Standard, proposed a well-considered and practical
method of employing Montgolfier reconnoitring balloons, portable,
readily inflated, and especially suited to the war in South Africa.
Perhaps the last letters of a private nature penned by Mr. Coxwell
were to the writer and his daughter, full of friendly and valuable
suggestion, and more particularly commenting on a recent scientific
aerial voyage, which proved to be not only sensational, but established
a record in English ballooning.

The great train of the November meteors, known as the Leonids, which at
regular periods of thirty-three years had in the past encountered the
earth's atmosphere, was due, and over-due. The cause of this, and of
their finally eluding observation, need only be very briefly touched
on here. The actual meteoric train is known to travel in an elongated
ellipse, the far end of which lies near the confines of the solar
system, while at a point near the hither end the earth's orbit runs
slantingly athwart it, forming, as it were, a level crossing common
to the two orbits, the earth taking some five or six hours in transit.
Calculation shows that the meteor train is to be expected at this
crossing every thirty-three and a third years, while the train is
extended to such an enormous length--taking more than a year to draw
clear--that the earth must needs encounter it ere it gets by, possibly
even two years running. There could be no absolute certainty about the
exact year, nor the exact night when the earth and the meteors would
foregather, owing to the uncertain disturbance which the latter must
suffer from the pull of the planetary bodies in the long journey out
a