him down into a field, not without
some unpleasant scratches.

Nor was Garnerin the only successful parachutist at this period. A
Polish aeronaut, Jordaki Kuparento, ascended from Warsaw on the 24th
of July, 1804 in a hot air balloon, taking up, as was the custom, an
attached furnace, which caused the balloon to take fire when at a great
height. Kuparento, however, who was alone, had as a precaution provided
himself with a parachute, and with this he seems to have found no
difficulty in effecting a safe descent to earth.

It was many years after this that fresh experimentalists, introducing
parachutes on new lines and faulty in construction, met with death or
disaster. Enough, however, has already been said to show that in
the early years we are now traversing in this history a perfectly
practicable parachute had become an accomplished fact. The early form is
well described by Mr. Monck Mason in a letter to the Morning Herald in
1837, written on the eve of an unrehearsed and fatal experiment made by
Mr. Cocking, which must receive notice in due course. "The principle,"
writes Mr. Monck Mason, "upon which all these parachutes were
constructed is the same, and consists simply of a flattened dome of silk
or linen from 24 feet to 28 feet in diameter. From the outer margin all
around at stated intervals proceed a large number of cords, in length
about the diameter of the dome itself, which, being collected together
in one point and made fast to another of superior dimensions attached to
the apex of the machine, serve to maintain it in its form when expanded
in the progress of the descent. To this centre cord likewise, at a
distance below the point of junction, varying according to the fancy of
the aeronaut, is fixed the car or basket in which he is seated, and the
whole suspended from the network of the balloon in such a manner as to
be capable of being detached in an instant at the will of the individual
by cutting the rope by which it is made fast above."

It followed almost as a matter of course that so soon as the balloon
had been made subject to something like due control, and thus had become
recognised as a new machine fairly reduced to the service of man, it
began to be regarded as an instrument which should be made capable of
being devoted to scientific research. Indeed, it may be claimed that,
among the very earliest aeronauts, those who had sailed away into the
skies and brought back intelligent observations or