Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery

Subjects:

Telegraphy, Error, Aeronautics, Meteorology, War

    Suggests that the effects of the recent aurora borealis on telegraph cables may account for a garbled report, telegraphed from Lille, asserting that a French balloonist who landed behind Prussian lines was obliged to 'burn his dispatches and fly through Belgium'. Puzzled by the fact that the Prussians did not 'secure his dispatches' and take him prisoner, suggests that the balloon might have fallen without the aeronaut, who flew through the air to Belgium.