the eve of each of his excursions, and
returning, with an equal simplicity, he renders thanks "after supper in
the little room where he kept his barometers."

To the last Lavalle was a Catholic of the old school, accepting--he who
had looked into the very heart of the lightnings--the dogmas of papal
infallibility, of absolution, of confession--of relics great and small.
Marvellous--enviable contradiction!

The completion of the Tellurionical Records closed what Lavalle himself
was pleased to call the theoretical side of his labours--labours from
which the youngest and least impressionable planeur might well have
shrunk. He had traced through cold and heat, across the deeps of the
oceans, with instruments of his own invention, over the inhospitable
heart of the polar ice and the sterile visage of the deserts, league by
league, patiently, unweariedly, remorselessly, from their ever-shifting
cradle under the magnetic pole to their exalted death-bed in the utmost
ether of the upper atmosphere--each one of the Isoconical
Tellurions--Lavalle's Curves, as we call them to-day. He had
disentangled the nodes of their intersections, assigning to each its
regulated period of flux and reflux. Thus equipped, he summons Herrera
and Tinsley, his pupils, to the final demonstration as calmly as though
he were ordering his flighter for some midday journey to Marseilles.

"I have proved my thesis," he writes. "It remains now only that you
should witness the proof. We go to Manila to-morrow. A cyclone will form
off the Pescadores S. 17 E. in four days, and will reach its maximum
intensity in twenty-seven hours after inception. It is there I will show
you the Truth."

A letter heretofore unpublished from Herrera to Madame Lavalle tells us
how the Master's prophecy was verified.

(_To be continued_.)

ADVERTISING SECTION

MISCELLANEOUS

WANTS

Required immediately, for East Africa, a thoroughly competent Plane and
Dirigible Driver, acquainted with Petrol Radium and Helium motors and
generators. Low-level work only, but must understand heavy-weight digs.

MOSSAMEDES TRANSPORT ASSOC.
84 Palestine Buildings, E. C.

* * * * *

Man wanted--Dig driver for Southern Alps with Saharan summer trips. High
levels, high speed, high wages.

Apply M. SIDNEY
Hotel San Stefano. Monte Carlo

* * * * *

Family dirigible. A competent, steady man wanted