d to realise:--"There came down in front of
him, and apparently not more than 50 feet distant, a grand discharge of
electricity." Then he feels the car lifted, the gas suddenly expands
to overflowing, and the balloon is hurled through the cloud with
inconceivable velocity, this happening several times, with tremendous
oscillations of the car, until the balloon is borne to earth in a
torrent of rain. We fancy that many practical balloonists will hardly
endorse this description.

But we have another, relating to one of the most distinguished
aeronauts, M. Eugene Godard, who, in an ascent with local journalists,
was caught in a thunderstorm. Here we are told--presumably by the
journalists--that "twice the lightning flashed within a few yards of the
terror-stricken crew."

Once again, in an ascent at Derby, a spectator writes:--"The lightning
played upon the sphere of the balloon, lighting it up and making things
visible through it." This, however, one must suppose, can hardly apply
to the balloon when liberated.

But a graphic description of a very different character given in the
"Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society" for January,
1901, is of real value. It appears that three lieutenants of the
Prussian Balloon Corps took charge of a balloon that ascended at Berlin,
and, when at a height of 2,300 feet, became enveloped in the mist,
through which only occasional glimpses of earth were seen. At this point
a sharp, crackling sound was heard at the ring, like the sparking of
a huge electrical machine, and, looking up, the voyagers beheld sparks
apparently some half-inch thick, and over two feet in length,
playing from the ring. Thunder was heard, but--and this may have
significance--only before and after the above phenomenon.

Another instructive experience is recorded of the younger Green in an
ascent which he made from Frankfort-on-the-Maine. On this occasion he
relates that he encountered a thunderstorm, and at a height of 4,400
feet found himself at the level where the storm clouds were discharging
themselves in a deluge. He seems to have had no difficulty in ascending
through the storm into the clear sky above, where a breeze from another
quarter quickly carried him away from the storm centre.

This co-existence, or conflict of opposite currents, is held to be the
common characteristic, if not the main cause, of thunderstorms, and
tallies with the following personal experience. It was in typical Jul