Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/564

548 and certain comets, and spoke of the coincidences as being numerous enough, and sufficiently exact to render desirable the further cultivation of cometary astronomy by star-shower observations. The report of 1875 pointed out that the work of properly treating meteor observations had become so great as to be beyond the power of the Association to grapple with it, and commended the arrangements which M. Leverrier was making for that study. In 1878 the committee, finding it probable that the highest attainable accuracy in mapping the observed directions of the apparent paths of shooting-stars was the real key to the solution of the problem presented by their nightly flights, and that the question of the possible connection of fire-balls and aërolites, or large stony masses, with such showers—and accordingly, it might be, in certain cases, with comets—depended for its solution on accurate observations of these meteors, recommended the study as an attractive one, and gave a series of directions for following it up.

A committee was appointed at the Aberdeen meeting of the British Association in 1859 to make observations, by means of a balloon, in the higher regions of the atmosphere. Nothing was done for two years, for want of a balloon and an observer. The committee was reappointed at the Manchester meeting in 1861; a balloon was contracted for with Mr. Coxwell, an expert aëronaut, and Mr. Glaisher, the most active member of the committee, volunteered to go up with him and make the observations. Twenty-eight ascents were made from Wolverhampton, the Crystal Palace, and other places not far from London, between the 17th of July, 1862, and the 26th of May, 1866, of which seven were made into extraordinarily high regions, from 22,884 feet to 37,000 feet, or seven miles. In all these ascents, Mr. Glaisher remarks, in the introduction to "Travels in the Air," "I used the balloon as I found it. The desire which influenced me was to ascend to the higher regions and travel by its means in furtherance of a better knowledge of atmospheric phenomena; neither its management nor its improvement formed a part of my plan."

The first ascent was marked by meeting a warm current at a great elevation. Clouds were entered at 4,000 feet, which proved to be also 4,000 feet thick. The temperature at starting being 59° Fahr., fell to 45° at 4,000 feet, and to 26° at 10,000 feet, from which it remained stationary up to 13,000 feet. Then it rose to 31° at 15,500 feet, and 42° at 19,500 feet, after which it fell rapidly to 16° at 26,000 feet.

In the ascent of September 1, 1862, the curious phenomenon was observed of the formation of clouds along the course of the Thames from the Nore to Richmond. The clouds followed the river in its course through all its windings, not departing from it