At the end of November, when over thirty escape voyages had been made, two fatal disasters occurred. A sailor of the name of Prince ascended alone on a moonless night, and at dawn, away on the north coast of Scotland, some fishermen sighted a balloon in the sky dropping to the westward in the ocean. The only subsequent trace of this balloon was a bag of despatches picked up in the Channel. Curiously enough, two days later almost the same story was repeated. Two aeronauts, this time in charge of despatches and pigeons, were carried out to sea and never traced. Undeterred by these disasters, a notable escape was now attempted. An important total eclipse of the sun was to occur in a track crossing southern Spain and Algeria on December 22nd. An enthusiastic astronomer, Janssen, was commissioned by the Academy of Sciences to attend and make observations of this eclipse. But M. Janssen was in Paris, as were also his instruments, and the eclipse track lay nearly a thousand miles away. The one and only possible mode of fulfilling his commission was to try the off-chance afforded by balloon, and this chance he resorted to only twenty days before the eclipse was due. Taking with him the essential parts of a reflecting telescope, and an active young sailor as assistant, he left Paris at 6 a.m. and rose at once to 3,600 feet, dipping again somewhat at sunrise (owing, as he supposed, to loss of heat through radiation), but subsequently ascending again rapidly under the increased altitude of the sun till his balloon attained its highest level of 7,200 feet. From this elevation, shortly after 11 a.m., he sighted the sea, when he commenced a descent which brought him to earth at the mouth of the Loire. It had been fast travelling--some 300 miles in little more than three hours--and the ground wind was strong. Nevertheless, neither passengers nor instruments were injured, and M. Janssen was fully established by the day of eclipse on his observing ground at Oran, on the Algerian coast. It is distressing to add that the phenomenon was hidden by cloud. In the month that followed this splendid venture no fewer than fifteen balloons escaped from Paris, of which four fell into the hands of the enemy, although for greater security all ascents were now being made by night.