398                          TRAVELS IN THE AIR.

and Bertaux at Monaco, and we have no doubt that new proofs
wiU be forthcoming every year.

• In fact, no one can define the limits of this method, which will
be the more fertile in results the more our knowledge of the atmo¬
spheric currents extends; and the sooner we become acquainted
with their directions and velocities the better.

Many readers will, no doubt, reproach us for not coming down
from the air with our hands fuU of new discoveries, and thereby
throwing out a new basis for the future of meteorological science.
It might have been otherwise if we had had better baUoons at our
disposal, and if the ascents had been more numerous and more
systematically organized. But in the, aerial workshop it is not
possible to do good work with bad tools.

Nevertheless, this book, we sincerely hope, will make an epoch
in the history of aerostatics, for it is the first time that a series
of aerial scenes have been published as observed by aeronauts. .It
is the first time that artists have gone up in balloons for the
purpose of familiarizing the eyes of the public with the scenes
they have been called upon to reproduce with the pencil. And if
balloons, so much neglected in modern times, had merely placed
before the gaze of the aerial explorer these incomparable panoramas,
these magnificent scenes, before which the Alps themselves grow
shiaU, whilst earthly sunsets are eclipsed in splendour, and the ocean
itself drowned in an ocean of light still more vast, would they
not have done enough for the glory of Montgolfier and Pilatre ?
 

THE END.
 

LOKDON :   R.   CLAY,   SONS,   ' NP  TAYLOR, PRINTERS,  BREAD  STREET  HILL.