Page:Wonderful Balloon Ascents, 1870.djvu/128

110 burst by the expansion of the hydrogen gas. No balloon, as we have already seen, should be entirely inflated at the beginning of a journey. Blanchard had a narrow escape from being the victim of his ignorance of physics, and it is a wonder he was not left to the mercy of fate in a burst balloon, at several thousand feet above the earth.

Biot, the savant, who had watched the experiment, declared that Blanchard did not stir himself, and that the variations of his course are alone to be attributed to the currents of air that he encountered. As he had inscribed upon his flags, his balloons, and his entrance tickets, from which he realised a considerable sum, the ambitious legend, Sic itur ad astra, the following epigram was produced respecting him:—  From the Field of Mars he took his flight: In a field close by he tumbled; But our money having taken He smiled though sadly shaken, As Sic itur ad astra he mumbled.

What is most important to examine in each of the great aerial voyages that have been made, is the special character which distinguishes them from average experiments. All our great voyages are rendered special and particular by the ideas of the men who undertook them, and the aims which they severally meant to achieve by them. The early ascents of Montgolfier had for their aim the establishment of the fact that any body lighter than the volume of air which it displaces will rise in the atmosphere; those of Roziers were undertaken to prove that man can apply this principle for the purpose of making actual aerial voyages; those of Robertson, Gay-Lussac, &c., were undertaken for the purpose of ascertaining certain meteorological phenomena;