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Read before the Franklin Institute at its regular meeting in October 1870.

Balloon Meteorology.

In the science of meteorology there is no instrumentality competent to do so much good, and [[strikethrough]] yet [[/strikethrough]] which has as yet received so little attention, as the Balloon. The phenomena of the atmosphere, in their relations to climate and sanitary effects - to agriculture - to phisiology - to our mental forces, and temperaments, are more fertile in scientific developments, than an observer from the earth would suppose. Meteorological investigations are as occult, tame and spiritless, without the aid of an air-ship as would be hydrographical investigations without the aid of the water ship. The deep sea - soundings, so pregnant with interest in their revelations of infusorial life at the bottom of the ocean, find their counterpart in the deep air soundings in the opposite directions, in the myriads of vegetable life floating upon the currents of the atmosphere. It is not an uncommon thing to see the air currents above the clouds teeming with thistle seed, each one with its silken parachute sailing along in grand procession. And so too [[strikethrough]] it [[/strikethrough]] is it with the pollen of other plants, moving along in little nebulous cloud patches. 

The upper air is not so barren of scientific interest, as its apparent vaccuity when viewed from the earth would indicate. It is a marvel, that so fruitful as subject, and one so easily to be explored, is so much neglected. The science of light seems almost reversed in looking down through the atmosphere to the earth from an insulated portion of two or three miles of altitude. The earth looks concave, and the horizon is loomed up above the level of the observer. Sometimes a city five or ten miles off may be seen hanging in the heavens upside down, and illuminated by three suns. When this phenomenon presents itself above the cloud region, it is more distinctly defined, than where it occurs near the surface of the earth.

The phenomena of the clouds [[strikethrough]] is [[/strikethrough]] are full of interest. Some are sense, and some are attenuated. Some are warm, and some

Transcription Notes:
*Infusoria is a collective term for minute aquatic creatures.