"These cloaks," said Edric, "and those

hampers, for instance, cannot be of the slightest use."

"I beg your pardon," returned the doctor.

"The cloaks are of asbestos, and will be necessary to protect us from ignition, if we should encounter any electric matter in the clouds; and the hampers are filled with elastic plugs for our ears and noses, and tubes and barrels of common air, for us to breathe when we get beyond the atmosphere of the earth."

"But what occasion shall we have to go beyond it?"

"How can we do otherwise? Surely you don't mean to travel the whole distance in the balloon? I thought, of course, you would adopt the present fashionable mode of travelling, and after mounting the seventeen miles or thereabouts, which is necessary to get clear of the mundane attraction, to wait there till the turning of the globe should bring Egypt directly under our feet."

"But it is net in the same latitude."