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[[1 image - drawing]] [[caption]] THE NEW AIRSHIP INVENTED BY FREDERIC F. SCHROEDER OF BALTIMORE, MARYLAND [[/caption]] Tuesday, April 18, 1876. THROUGH ETHER AND OVER OCEAN. Professor Wise Wants a Balloon in which to Sail to Europe. The Philadelphia Bulletin contains the following letter from our former townsman, Professor John Wise, the veteran aeronaut: "In your criticism on my proposition to our corporate authorities to furnish them a fleet of balloons with which to symbolize the progress of our century's life, on the Fourth of July next, you take occasion to advert to my favorite hobby of crossing the ocean with the balloon as a more noble use of the art volante. Nothing comes nearer to my heart than the solution of this problem. I am as certain of being able to do it as was Columbus certain of finding our Continent with his little ships. Find me an Isabella, and I will drop everything else but the work of preparation of an outfit with which to start from this city for the consummation of the voyage, on the Fourth of July next, or sooner. I can do it, and do it in this way: As soon as the air-ship covers the Gulf Stream I will kedge it down to within 5,000 feet of the water with a device, simple in form, and as easily worked as a kedge-anchor to a drifting ship. It will be a mere matter of flotation, and as easy to be accomplished as it is to float down the Mississippi, from St. Paul to New Orleans, with a batteau. "I know what I know; and I know what I don't know. I know that the atmosphere in its aggregate form is continually drifting around the solid body of our planet from west to east. I know there is a gulf stream of water in the Atlantic that drifts from our shore in an east by north course and strikes the southern coast of Ireland. I know there is a corresponding aerial gulf-stream moving with it. I don't know what causes these movements any more than I do what causes the motion of my blood from arteries to veins and veins to arteries. Harvey was as much laughed at for posting this problem of blood circulation, as I am for posting the 'Eastern Current.' I say again, find me a patron, and I will pledge my aeronautic reputation that I will solve the problem and hand his name down to posterity as a firm and faithful believer in the possibility of giving practical effect to that which is true in the abstract. About the 'Eastern Current' the Smithsonian Institution answers me, 'That it is an established scientific fact of every day's occurrence' "I can compass it within the outlay of five thousand dollars, and I ask nothing but the honor of being the simple instrument of lifting up a fold in the curtain that screens more stupendous problems for man's solution and uses in the ages to come, than the simple crossing of the ocean by way of the atmospere."