In recent years the greatest height reached by a balloon was attained by the Italian aeronauts Piacenza and Mina in the “Albatross,” on August 9, 1909. They went up from Turin to the altitude of 30,350 feet. The world’s height record rests with Professors Berson and Suring of Berlin, who on July 31, 1901, reached 35,500 feet. The record of 37,000 feet claimed by Glaisher and Coxwell in their ascension on September 5, 1862, has been rejected as not authentic for several discrepancies in their observations, and on the ground that their instruments were not of the highest reliability. As they carried no oxygen, and reported that for a time they were both unconscious, it is estimated that the highest point they could have reached under the conditions was less than 31,000 feet. The greatest speed ever recorded for any balloon voyage was that of Captain von Sigsfield and Dr. Linke in their fatal journey from Berlin to Antwerp, during which the velocity of 125 miles per hour was recorded. Ballooning as a sport has a fascination all its own. There is much of the spice of adventure in the fact that one’s destiny is quite unknown. Floating with the wind, there is no consciousness of motion. Though the wind may be travelling at great speed, the balloon seems to be in a complete calm. A lady passenger, writing of a recent trip, has thus described her experience:--“The world continues slowly to unroll itself in ever-varying but ever-beautiful panorama--patchwork fields, shimmering silver streaks, toy box churches and houses, and white roads like the joints of a jig-saw puzzle. And presently cotton-wool billows come creeping up, with purple shadows and fleecy outlines and prismatic rainbow effects. Sometimes they invade the car, and shroud it for a while in clinging warm white wreaths, and anon they fall below and shut out the world with a glorious curtain, and we are all alone in perfect silence, in perfect peace, and in a realm made for us alone. “And so the happy, restful hours go smoothly by, until the earth has had enough of it, and rising up more or less rapidly to invade our solitude, hits the bottom of our basket, and we step out, or maybe roll out, into every-day existence a hundred miles away.” The perfect smoothness of motion, the absolute quiet, and the absence of distracting apparatus combine to render balloon voyaging the most delightful mode of transit from place to place. Some of the most fascinating bits of descriptive writing are those of aeronauts. The following quotation from the report of Capt. A. Hildebrandt, of the balloon corps of the Prussian army, will show that although his expeditions were wholly scientific, he was far from indifferent to the sublimer influences of nature by which he was often surrounded.