Of all the voyages which the history of æronautics presents to our notice, the _nocturnal_ ærial excursions of M. Garnerin must be ranked among the most enterprising and adventurous. At eleven o’clock in the evening of the 4th August, 1807, he ascended from Tivoli, at Paris, under the Russian flag, as a token of the peace that subsisted between France and Russia. His balloon was illuminated by twenty lamps; and to obviate all danger of communication between these and the hydrogen gas, which it might be necessary to discharge in the course of the voyage, the nearest of the lamps was fourteen feet distant from the balloon, and conductors were provided to carry the gas away in an opposite direction. After his ascent, rockets, which had been let off at Tivoli, seemed to him scarcely to rise above the earth, and Paris, with all its lamps, appeared a plain studded with luminous spots. In forty minutes he found himself at an elevation of thirteen thousand two hundred feet, when, in consequence of the dilation of the balloon, he was under the necessity of discharging part of the inflammable air. About twelve o’clock, when three thousand six hundred feet from the earth, he heard the barking of dogs; about two, he saw several meteors flying around him, but none of them so near as to create apprehension. At half past three he beheld the sun emerging in brilliant majesty above an ocean of clouds, and the air being therefore expanded, the balloon soon rose fifteen thousand feet above the earth, where he felt the cold exceedingly intense. In seven hours and a half from his departure, M. Garnerin descended near Loges, forty-five leagues distant from Paris. The same intrepid æronaut undertook a second nocturnal voyage, on the 21st of September, 1807, in the course of which he was exposed to the most imminent danger. M. Garnerin, prognosticating an approaching storm, from the state of the atmosphere, refused to be accompanied by M. de Chassenton, who earnestly requested it. He ascended therefore alone from Tivoli, at ten o’clock, and was carried up with unexampled rapidity to an immense height above the clouds.