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Anyhow, B.J. Green of Brooklyn now owns the airship, having bid $80 for it, and having no time to renig before the auctioneer cried "You're it." Mr. Green denied the report that he was going to use it for his summer trips to Coney Island to beat the Brooklyn Rapid Transit, but any one seeing a streak of green amid the blue overhead this summer will quickly guess that it is the Green of Brooklyn. Consul, Capt. Bostock's famous trained gorilla, was also sold to-day. He is less educated than he was, having been claimed by death, and is only a stuffed Consul now He was purchased by William Woodbridge, a member of the Swans Club, and it is reported that Consul is to be elected to membership in that organization. Once Consul was quoted at $5,000, but he only added $5 to Uncle Sam's exchequer. It is the intention of the Aero club of St Louis to make this international contest the occasion of a general aeronautic carnival, extending through perhaps a week. Events for dirigible airships, aeroplanes, and other kind of flying machines, will probably be arranged. One feature of the carnival will be a contest for the Lahm cup, to be awarded to the person making a record of more than 402 miles, the distance covered by Lieut Frank F. Lahm's balloon when he won the first compitition for the Gordon Bennett cup last year. - Those unfamiliar with balloon races are naturally most interested to learn where the contestants are likely to land after their aerial voyage. This is by far the most important point in the whole contest. The answer to this query is that the millionaires who are engineering this novel rave have discovered that St Louis is so far removed from mountains and all large bodies of water that it affords an ideal field for ballooning, offering an immense stretch of space over which the airships can pass with very little danger. They also found that upper air currents of St Louis are almost invariably from southwest to northeast, so that 1500 to 2000 miles can be traversed before the ocean is reached, and without encountering any mountains. Furthermore, the coal gas as St Louis prove the best for ballooning purposes that they had ever tested. These would appear to be ideal conditions or at any rate far superior to those that exist near the coasts. - Ballooning recalls all sorts of attempts in the past at aerial navigation. Balloons were first used by Montgolfier in 1783. That genis used heated air. A few weeks later MessrsCharles and Roberts improved on this idea by using hydrogen. There have been aeroplanes and dirigible airships without number experimented upon, and some of them with considerable success, but the 20th century finds the designers of balloons and various flying machine more confident than ever that they are to succeed soon in utilizing the space above the earth for aerial navigation on a grand scale. Such remarkable progress has been made already in this direction that whoever should argue that it cannot be accomplished successfully within a comparatively short time would be considered greatly at fault. And if aerial navigation should be made possible and safe on an extensive scale throughout this country in the near future, what a large number of new problems might arise to perplex our lawmakers who are dazed already over the question of transportation on land! What a scramble there might be for navigation franchises in the air! How the lawyers would wrangle as to who owned the air above each community! After all, who does own the air? Let debating societies take up this question and give it a good airing.
