balloonist s did some extraordinarily plucky things. There is a fascinating book about ballooning called Travels in the Air, by James Glaisher,^[1] but I fear it is now out of print, so that your only chance is to find it in some library. It has beautiful pictures of the

balloon travelling above the clouds, with wonderful sunrise effects. Sometimes the balloonists saw their own shadow thrown on the clouds: and on one occasion, in 1866, they saw a great shower of meteors. But the most exciting occasion was when they got