. Scientific American Volume 25 Number 21 (November 1871). rom 10 to 30 long by 2 or 3 wide, bright-er and closer together where the pillars had formerly stood,and rapidly ascending. When I first looked, some of them had already reached ahight of nearly 4 (100,000 miles), and while I watched themthey rose, with a motion almost perceptible to the eye, untilin ten minutes (105) the uppermost were more than 200,000miles above the solar surface. This was ascertained by care-ful measurement; the mean of three closely accordant deter-minations gave 7 49 as the extreme altitude attained, andFl(J j I
. Scientific American Volume 25 Number 21 (November 1871). rom 10 to 30 long by 2 or 3 wide, bright-er and closer together where the pillars had formerly stood,and rapidly ascending. When I first looked, some of them had already reached ahight of nearly 4 (100,000 miles), and while I watched themthey rose, with a motion almost perceptible to the eye, untilin ten minutes (105) the uppermost were more than 200,000miles above the solar surface. This was ascertained by care-ful measurement; the mean of three closely accordant deter-minations gave 7 49 as the extreme altitude attained, andFl(J j I am particular in the statement be-cause, so far as Iknow, chromo-spheric matter(redhydrogen in thiscase) has neverbeen observed atan altitude ex-ceeding 5. Thevelocity of ascentalso, 1G6 miles persecond, is consid-erably greaterthan anythinghitherto general idea ofi t s appearance,when the Sla-in e n t s attainedtheir greatest ele-vation, may be ob-tained from Fig. the filamentsments rose they gradually faded away liko a dissolving cloud,. ire Men to Fly? Darwin tells us that even in the upper regions of the air,near the summits of the Andes, vultures maybe seen floatingonwards for miles upon motionless wings. What is thesecret of this flotation ? Gravitation acts as forcibly on thesubstance of the bird as on that of the animal. Nor can webelieve that there is any buoyancy, properly so called, in thebirds body or wings. Those vultures, which seemed to float steadily throughstill air, must have received support from the air in one ormore of three several ways. Either by swift motion, acquiredbefore the floating began and slowly reduced through theeffects of aerial resistance, or by the action of aerial currentsthrough which they were carried, or else, while seeming tofloat horizontally, they were in reality traversing a slightlysloped descending path. Neither of the two former explana-tions seems available, because the floating motion is contin-ued so long that t
Size: 1365px × 1831px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectiron, booksubjectnitr
