"The meeting with this S.W. current is of the highest importance, for it goes far to explain why England possesses a winter temperature so much higher than is due to her northern latitude. Our high winter temperature has hitherto been mostly referred to the influence of the Gulf Stream. Without doubting the influence of this natural agent, it is necessary to add the effect of a parallel atmospheric current to the oceanic current coming from the same region--a true aerial Gulf Stream. This great energetic current meets with no obstruction in coming to us, or to Norway, but passes over the level Atlantic without interruption from mountains. It cannot, however, reach France without crossing Spain and the lofty range of the Pyrenees, and the effect of these cold mountains in reducing its temperature is so great that the former country derives but little warmth from it." An ascent from Woolwich, arranged as near the equinox of that year as could be managed, supplied some further remarkable results. The temperature, which was 45 degrees to begin with, at 4.7 p.m., crept down fairly steadily till 4,000 feet altitude was registered, when, in a region of warm fog, it commenced rising abruptly, and at 7,500 feet, in blue sky, stood at the same reading as when the balloon had risen only 1,500 feet. Then, amid many anomalous vicissitudes, the most curious, perhaps, was that recorded late in the afternoon, when, at 10,000 feet, the air was actually warmer than when the ascent began. That the temperature of the upper air commonly commences to rise after nightfall as the warmth radiated through day hours off the earth collects aloft, is a fact well known to the balloonist, and Mr. Glaisher carried out with considerable success a well-arranged programme for investigating the facts of the case. Starting from Windsor on an afternoon of late May, he so arranged matters that his departure from earth took place about an hour and three quarters before sunset, his intention being to rise to a definite height, and with as uniform a speed as possible to time his descent so as to reach earth at the moment of sundown; and then to re-ascend and descend again m a precisely similar manner during an hour and three-quarters after sunset, taking observations all the way. Ascending for the first flight, he left a temperature of 58 degrees on the earth, and found it 55 degrees at 1,200 feet, then 43 degrees at 3,600 feet, and 29 1/2 degrees at the culminating point of 6,200 feet. Then, during the descent, the temperature increased, though not uniformly, till he was nearly brushing the tops of the trees, where it was some 3 degrees colder than at starting.