A DARING LEAP.

Auckland Star, Volume XVII, Issue 247, 20 October 1886, Page 3

A DARING LEAP.

Jumping From a Tall Building Into tho Street.

New York, September 14.—The " Tribune's " Philadelphia special of September 13th says : Professor Loroux leaped from tho Arch-street Museum at 12.30 o'clock to day to the street, a distance of 150 feet. He is 30 yoara old, fivo feet ten inches high and of athletic build. Ho was dressed in blue tights and had on a pair of common laced Bhooa. He achieved considerable reputation as a jumper from balloons, having made about thirty such loap.s and having jumped from High Bridge in New York, and also from the bridge in Paterson, N. J. Ho was aided in his feat today by a parachuto-like apparatus attached to a wire leading across the street. He seized a hook at the bottom of the parachuto and was carried by it over the street, and when it was over tho spot where the jumper desired to drop he let go the rope, and immediately he and the parachute shot downwards like a cannon ball for thirty feet, when the parachute filled and the gpaod was slackened. A strong wind blew him over into tho crowd, in the midst of which he descended with a rush. The people in the immediate vicinity tried to open a space, but tho pressure would not let them, and Leroux tt-uck a boy with his knee, which toppled him over and caused him to strike his head aeainst another of the crowd, cutting a gash in his forehead just over the left eye, from which the blood flowed freely. Otherwise tho leap T?as a complete success. He declared he was not h«rt, and started for New York to fill hie engagement?.

The number of babies born annually in the wo.ld is about 43,000,000; daily, 117 80S: per minute, 80. The number of deaths annually is about 39,000,000; daily, 19G 849 ; per minute, 74. On an average 106 boys are born alive to 100 girle, yet at the end of the first year boys and girls are almost equal in number.