Genre:

Essay, Drollery

Subjects:

Aeronautics, Technology, Display, Cultural Geography

People mentioned:

Mme Poitevin

    Responding to news of another balloon bursting, notes that the balloon has long been regarded as a 'perfectly useless invention'. Compares English balloon displays to the more dramatic French variety, where the aeronauts have no 'scruples about risking their necks' and where the objects raised by balloon include an 'eight-oar boat' and a 'four-roomed house, with its furniture and occupants'.