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examination, evidently enjoying a high degree of health, breathing with
the greatest ease and perfect regularity, and evincing not the slightest
sign of any uneasiness whatever. I could only account for all this by
extending my theory, and supposing that the highly rarefied atmosphere
around might perhaps not be, as I had taken for granted, chemically
insufficient for the purposes of life, and that a person born in such
a medium might, possibly, be unaware of any inconvenience attending its
inhalation, while, upon removal to the denser strata near the earth,
he might endure tortures of a similar nature to those I had so lately
experienced. It has since been to me a matter of deep regret that an
awkward accident, at this time, occasioned me the loss of my little
family of cats, and deprived me of the insight into this matter which a
continued experiment might have afforded. In passing my hand through
the valve, with a cup of water for the old puss, the sleeves of my shirt
became entangled in the loop which sustained the basket, and thus, in
a moment, loosened it from the bottom. Had the whole actually vanished
into air, it could not have shot from my sight in a more abrupt and
instantaneous manner. Positively, there could not have intervened the
tenth part of a second between the disengagement of the basket and its
absolute and total disappearance with all that it contained. My good
wishes followed it to the earth, but of course, I had no hope that
either cat or kittens would ever live to tell the tale of their
misfortune.
"At six o'clock, I perceived a great portion of the earth's visible area
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