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I do not believe that, without such previous study and experience with a spherical balloon, a man can be capable of succeeding with an elongated dirigible balloon, whose handling is so much more delicate. Before attempting to direct an air-ship it is necessary to have learned in an ordinary balloon the conditions of the atmospheric medium, to have become acquainted with the caprices of the wind, and to have gone thoroughly into the difficulties of the ballast problem from the triple point of view of starting, of equilibrium in the air, and of landing at the end of the trip. To have been oneself the captain of an ordinary balloon at the very least a dozen times seems to me an indispensable preliminary to acquiring an exact notion of the requisites for constructing and handling an elongated balloon furnished with its motor and propeller. Naturally, I am filled with amazement when I see inventors, who have never set a foot in the basket, drawing up on paper—and even executing in whole or in part—fantastic air-ships, whose balloons are to have a capacity of thousands of cubic metres, loaded down with enormous motors which they do not succeed in raising from the ground, and furnished with machinery so