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He next repeated the experiment in Philadelphia, this time exploding the balloon intentionally, after first creating an artificial cloud. He came down safely near the Schuylkill, where the Centennial buildings now are situated. The artificial cloud was made simply by emptying some sacks containing wood ashes mixed with lamp-black. He had never read of a single case where injury had resulted to the occupants of a balloon from a collapse of the machine in the air. He had twenty-one cases on record and not one person had been injured.

The possibilities of crossing the ocean in a balloon were discussed, and it was contended that the project was wholly feasible. But for the event of the second great fire in Boston he believed he would have crossed the ocean in a balloon from Boston. There were two ways to accomplish this feat. The first was by the easterly current which existed at some height, and his experience taught him that this was almost invariably to be found, and the second was by keeping within the aerial Gulf Stream which must surely exist just above the warm waters of the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic.

A conical drag had been invented which would be of service in this latter connection. As to the possibility of keeping a balloon afloat long enough, one might be made of copper or sheet iron, if it was large enough, and an opinion was expressed that cities might yet be lighted by means of a huge tank anchored in the air.

The balloon deserves a recognized place and a dignity, for its mission, in the belief of the lecturer, was to raise our civilization to a higher plane. It was not destined to solve the problem of aerial navigation, but that was surely coming. When humanity is fitted for it this will surely be reached. When a horse-power can be compressed within the weight of one hundred pounds this result will follow. The bird simply walks on the air. The eagles and buzzards go through the air. Why not man? The principle of the kite illustrated how the navigation of the air might be brought about. The aero-plane, an invention fostered by the British Aeronautic Society, also illustrated an important principle to be considered in this connection. It is on the plan of the disc which a boy "skims" through the fair. 

The Chinese construct a kite and poise it so nicely that it mounts into the air without a string attached. He was sorry to see money spent in the useless endeavor to make the balloon navigable. It must always remain a mere drifting machine. By a French device a balloon had been deflected eleven degrees from its true course, but it could not be made to go against the wind. That seemed a mechanical impossibility. 

In conclusion Mr. Wise expressed the hope that he had succeeded in showing that the balloon was worthy of a noble place in science, and that it deserved something better than to be made the vehicle for mere mountebank and aerobatic displays.



—M. G. Tissandier has contributed to the French Academy the results of his examination of the power which he has collected from atmospheric air obtained in various localities and at great altitudes. He finds this dust to be largely composed of rounded corpuscles which are attracted by magnet, and consist apparently of magnetic oxide of iron. To these particles he would assign a cosmical origin; indeed, he suggests that the finer debris of meteorites, becoming incandescent in its passage through the atmosphere, falls to the surface of the earth in the form of fused particles of magnetic oxide of iron. 


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Wednesday, December 22, 1875.


METEOROLOGICAL.

Abstract of a Discourse Delivery Before the Meteorological Section of the Franklin Institute, at its Regular Meeting, December, 1875, by John Wise. 

There is no factor of solution for the climatic differentiation of our yearly weather in the science of meteorology. No terrestrial cause is sufficient for an explanation. The earth's elements of motion—heat and cold, daily positions, land and water, &c.—are all constants, and must necessarily bring about a constantly receiving sameness of climatic conditions, one year with the other, if there were no other causes for the differentiation. It is evidently the result of a cosmical law not yet comprehended. Our present system of daily weather predictions is based upon resultants of the law of weather, as brought about by the variation of atmospheric pressure, a cosmical phenomenon that can find no better definition than that afforded in planetary perturbation. The moon has no doubt much to do with it, but the moon is too insignificant a body of itself to produce these perturbations, which bring about cyclones, earthquakes and tidal floods, such as we shall presently note. The geographical conditions of land and water, of mountain ranges, of polar cold and equatorial heat, can only modify the cosmical law of weather; the main cause is only to be accounted for in the variation of pressure upon the elastic shell of our atmosphere, and I propose to seek for it in the law of planetary perturbation. 

WHEN HIGH UP IN THE AIR
with my balloon I have noticed the formation of a great annulus of cumuli, and at a distance away the formation of a nimbus, sometimes giving out flashes of light. This phenomenon illustrates waving pressure in the air, clearly discernible in summer storms. 

Now these atmospheric fluctuations, both in our winter and summer storms, are so variable as to their times and places, as referable to the sameness of one year to the other, that we are compelled to seek the cause in outside movements, and of bodies more potent than the moon, since it is well known that the lunar predictions fail to meet it. If we take in connection with the moon's influence that of the planets, we shall find in the almost infinite variation of their conjunctions, oppositions and and quadratures, an outside force quite sufficient for all the great and small meteorological phenomena our world has experienced. It is not unreasonable to say that at any day we may be sunk into the depths of a yawning cataclysm, or swept into an inland sea formed of a flood by the water pressed out of the ocean by a grand planetary conjunction, capable of producing an etherial wave, such as caused the "Deluge" and less noted phenomena in our world's known history.

Meteorology is still an obscure science, in its infancy as it were, and yet the importance of its bearings upon all terrestrial things, on health, on wealth of nations, on intellectual evolution, and to a more correct comprehension of cosmical law, it is the corner-stone of all sciences. Gravitation is a pat word in the use of explanation for cosmical phenomena, but the doctrine of its laws, without the use of positive physical observations, taking it only in its abstract definitions, serves more to confuse the student of nature than it does to aid him. Purely mechanical science teaches us better, and the cosmogony is a mechanism of its most perfect order. Interplanetary space is filled with primordial matter—matter that is subject to vicissitudes like unto our earth's atmosphere; susceptible of meteoric showers in magnetic storms, of auroras, and meteors of aggregated magnetic ores, a rain, as it were, in the photosphere, throwing a little upon this planet and on that, bringing about much that we term phenomena, because we do not understand its rationale. 

THE PLANETS OF OUR SOLAR SYSTEM, cleaving their way through this ocean of nebulous matter, must produce waves and counter-waves, and bring about that variable pressure we experience in barometrical observations, as caused by outside actions, and it becomes an important element for consideration in the building up a more comprehensive science, Meteorology. 
At the present time two of our neighbor worlds are in apparent proximity, a position that will not happen again for centuries. I will not speak of that, nor Coggia's comet, but note some instances of extraordinary weather.

REMARKABLE WEATHER CONDITIONS.
In 461 the Pontus was frozen over; also the sea between Constantinople and Seutari.

In 462 the Danube was frozen over; again in 558.

In 695 the Thames was frozen over. Booths and platforms were erected on the ice.

In 762 the Dardanelles and Black Sea were frozen over.

In 923 the Thames was frozen hard for nine weeks.

In 1224 it was so low between the tower and bridges that children waded over it; and again in 1803 and 1836.

In 1235 its waters swelled around Westminster Hall that its occupants had to be released in boats.

In 1133 the cold was so intense in Italy as to freeze the Po from Cremona to the sea.

STORMS.

Oct. 11, 1741, a storm in India destroyed three hundred thousand persons on land and water. 

In the summer of 1762 there was a drought in America, and scarcely a sprinkle of rain fell from May to September.

In February, 1717, snow fell in the Carolinas to the depth of 6 feet, and in 1693 Charleston was nearly depopulated by an inundation. 

EARTHQUAKES.

In 1693 one hundred towns in Sicily were destroyed by an earthquake, and 100,000 persons perished in it. 

Aug. 21st, 1726, Palermo was destroyed by an earthquake and 10,000 people perished. 

Oct. 1st, 1755, Lisbon was swallowed up by an earthquake, and 60,000 people perished in six minutes. On the spot where it stood there is now 600 feet of water.

In 1792 Port Royal sunk into the sea with a part of its inhabitants. The dead bodies were washed ashore and produced a pestilence, of which 3,000 persons who had survived the earthquake died. 

The corollary of these remarkable conditions of earth, air and water direct us to look to outside interference upon our atmosphere in the way of abnormal pressure for an explanation of the differentiation of our yearly weather. 

A correlation of a number of disturbances of the kind cited, with extraordinary planetary conjunctions and the interferences of comets, may serve to give us a clue to a tolerably close determination of the time when we shall be visited by such fearful convulsions. The timetable of planetary movements may yet serve us as the gnomen of of meteorological events, and warn us of contingent cataclysms as well as the coming of floods and cyclones.

"THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN."

In the mutation of time things occur and recur, and the disturbing influences that brought about these great floods, storms and earthquakes will recur again. The evidences of the upheaved rocks as revealed in the deep cuts of our railroads and canals, speak with no doubtful tongue of the convulsions that have taken place under our feet; all referable to periods of natural conclusions, such as meteorology admonishes us to note, and the noting of which will, in the course of time and investigation, lead us to comprehend the laws of the Cosmogony sufficiently to probability the weather for the years to come, if not fairly in detail, sufficient to enable us to foretell its general character, if it will not enable us to foretell all the rains and droughts, spells of extreme temperatures and convulsions that split open the shell of the earth sufficiently to swallow up cities, islands and continents.

Change, eternal change, is the law of nature, and in nothing is it more impressively illustrated than in the action of our atmosphere. 

April 7 AMERICA 1876

AFFAIRS AROUND TOWN.

NOVEL ÆROSTATIONS.—John Wise, Sr., and his son, both æronauts of distinction, and who have always manifested a commendable disposition to elevate themselves and their fellows above the common level, yesterday handed to the Mayor, to be by him presented to Councils, the unique proposition to furnish a fleet of ærostats which shall represent, allegorically, the birth and progress of our republic. 

This fleet, which will consist of four balloons, will be dispatched from some to be designated point on the Centennial grounds, on the coming Fourth of July. The first will be a colossal balloon, of capacity sufficient to carry up 13 young ladies, appropriately costumed, and representing the 13 original States, under the charge of the Father of his Country, symbolized. The second will be in charge of a young lady attired as the Goddess of Liberty, soaring into space over the collected arts and industries of the world.

The third will contain an old seventy-sixer in Continental uniform, and the fourth, Young America in a triumphal car, rising in pursuit of fresh conquests for science and the amelioration of mankind, the youth to be represented by a lad from our Central High School.

These four aerostats will be handsomely and appropriately decorated, and will bear respectively the following inscriptions: 1. E Pluribus Unum: "United we stand, divided we fall." 2. Virtue, Liberty and Independence. 3. "Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and heart to this vote." 4. "Light, light; more light still."

Mr. Wise and his son ask the consideration of Councils to this programme, which if carried out will certainly be attractive feature of the great celebration.