In case any adventurous individual should be tempted to make trial of the powers of himself and his umbrella in this way, we think it right, by way of caution, to tell him that the French General Bournonville, who was imprisoned in the fortress of Olmutz in 1793, became so desperate that he attempted to regain his freedom by leaping with an umbrella from his window, which was forty feet from the ground. He hoped that the umbrella would break his fall. Doubtless it did so to some extent, and saved him from being killed, but being a large heavy man, he came down with sufficient violence to break his leg, and was carried back to his dungeon. The chief differences between a parachute and an umbrella lie in the great size of the former, and in the cords which stretch from the outer points of its ribs to the lower end of the handle. These cords give it strength, and prevent it from turning inside out. There is also a hole in the top of the parachute to allow some of the air to escape. The first parachute was constructed by Blanchard in 1785, and a dog was the first living creature that descended in it, and reached the earth unhurt. Blanchard afterwards made a descent in person at Basle, and broke his leg in the fall. The bold aeronaut Monsieur Garnerin next ventured to make the perilous descent. He visited London in 1802, and made several ascents in a balloon. During one of these, on the evening of the 2nd November, he cut himself adrift in his parachute when at a vast height. The parachute was made of white canvas, having thirty-two gores, which, when not in use, hung with its cords from a hoop near the top of the machine. When expanded, it formed a vast umbrella of twenty-three feet in diameter, with a small basket about four feet high, and two and a quarter wide, suspended below it. Monsieur Garnerin stood in this basket when his balloon mounted into the air from an enclosure near North Audley Street. The parachute hung like a curtain over his head, above it towered the balloon, beneath stood the anxious multitude.