dangerous experiment was his niece, Eliza Garnerin, who descended
several times in safety. Her Parachute had a large orifice in the
top, in order to check the oscillation, and this appears to have been
tolerably successful.

The next experimentalist was a person of the name of Cocking, who
ended his days in a manner unworthy his talents, through a series of
lamentable mistakes. His Parachute was constructed on the opposite
principle, of a wedge-like form, and was intended to cleave through
the air, instead of offering a resistance to it. It has not yet been
proved that the principle was wrong, but the defect lay in the
weakness of the materials employed in the formation of the Parachute.

On the 29th July, 1837, Mr. Cocking ascended in his new Parachute,
attached to the Great Nassau Balloon. Mr. Cocking liberated himself
from the balloon, the Parachute collapsed and fell, at a frightful
rate, into a field near Lea, where poor Cocking was found with an
awful wound on his right temple. He never spoke, but died almost
immediately afterwards. It is much to be regretted that the descent
was ever allowed to take place. The aeronauts themselves were for
some time in a state of imminent peril. Immediately the Parachute was
cut away, the balloon ascended with frightful velocity, owing to the
ascending power it necessarily gained by being freed from a weight of
nearly 500 pounds; and had it not been that its occupants applied
their mouths to the air-bags previously provided, they must have been
suffocated by the escaping gas. When the re-action took place, the
balloon had lost its buoyancy, and fell, rather than descended, to
the ground.

Mr. Hampton was the next person who attempted the experiment, and