Charles H. Grimley, whose views on aerial navigation have been alluded to, is a young Englishman who, while an expert air-sailor, has gained his experience rather in the pursuit of pleasure than of money, dedicating to the latter a more terrestrial vocation. His introduction to the upper currents was in the capacity of assistant to Stephen A. Simmonds, a wealthy enthusiast of London who made ascensions for the British Aeronautical Society. Mr. Grimley has made between forty and fifty aerial excursions, on one of them covering a distance of one hundred and sixty miles in three and a half hours, and on another occasion attaining a height of nineteen thousand four hundred feet. A number of these voyages were made in Canada. Some of his descents have resulted in severe bruises. One of these unpleasantly sudden landings closed a brief trip made from Pittsburg in October, 1875, and took place on the Monongahela River five miles above that city. Mr. Grimley was accompanied by Harry Byram of the _Pittsburg Dispatch_. Two things regulate the force of impact in a balloon descent--the strength of the surface-current and the amount of ballast the aeronaut has with which to overbalance the weight in excess of equilibrium causing the descent. Both were against our adventurers. Most of their ballast had been expended in getting into the air, and while they had found almost a calm at an elevation of forty-five hundred feet, the surface-current was terrific. The balloon approached the earth at an angle of about forty-five degrees with fearful velocity, flew across Beck's Run and tore into a clump of trees growing on a rocky ledge dividing the ravine from the river. The basket was dashed from one tree-trunk to another, and, the balloon finally impaling itself on the branches of a huge oak, both its occupants were hurled halfway down the river-bank, the fall rendering them insensible. With returning consciousness came a sense of sundry bruises and cuts on their persons. A scalp-wound on Mr. Grimley's forehead had bled profusely upon both, imparting a sad and sanguinary cast to the countenances turned toward those who came to their assistance. [Illustration: INFLATING A BALLOON.]