Mr. Elliott, an American æronaut, in a letter giving an account of his ascension from Baltimore, thus speaks of the appearance of the Earth from a balloon:-- “I don’t know that I ever hinted heretofore that the æronaut may well be the most sceptical man about the rotundity of the Earth. Philosophy imposes the truth upon us; but the view of the Earth from the elevation of a balloon is that of an immense terrestrial basin, the deeper part of which is that directly under one’s feet. As we ascend, the Earth beneath us seems to recede--actually to sink away--while the horizon gradually and gracefully lifts a diversified slope stretching away farther and farther to a line that, at the highest elevation, seems to close with the sky. Thus upon a clear day, the æronaut feels as if suspended at about an equal distance between the vast blue oceanic concave above, and the equally expanded terrestrial basin below.” “The chief peculiarity of the view from a balloon, at a considerable elevation, was the altitude of the horizon, which remained practically on a level with the eye at an elevation of two miles, causing the surface of the Earth to appear _concave_ instead of _convex_, and to recede during the rapid ascent, whilst the horizon and the balloon seemed to be stationary.”--_London Journal_, July 18, 1857. During the important balloon ascents recently made for scientific purposes by Mr. Coxwell and Mr. Glaisher, of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, the same phenomenon was observed-- “The horizon always appeared on a level with the car.”--Vide “Glaisher’s Report.” The following diagram represents this appearance:-- [Illustration: FIG. 8.] The surface of the earth C D appears to rise to the line-of-sight from the balloon, and “seems to close with the sky” at the points H H in the same manner that the ceiling and the floor of a long room, or the top and bottom of a tunnel appear to approach each other, and from the same cause, viz.: that they are _parallel to the line-of-sight, and therefore horizontal_. If the Earth’s surface were convex the observer, looking from a balloon, instead of seeing it gradually ascend to the level of the eye, would have to look downwards to the horizon H H, as represented in figure 9, and the amount of dip in the line-of-sight C H would be the greatest at the highest elevation. [Illustration: FIG. 9.] Many more experiments have been made than are here described, but the selection now given is amply sufficient to prove that the surface of water is horizontal, and that the Earth, taken as a whole, its land and water together, is not a globe, has really no degree of sphericity; but is “to all intents and purposes” A PLANE!