APPEAL FOR £10,000

Evening Star, Issue 21505, 1 September 1933, Page 9

APPEAL FOR £IO,OOO

ing out one of the blankets.’’ The “ champagne, etc.,” was evidently being held in reserve. At intervals the voices of spectators floated up to them from the ground. “ Are you not afraid, my friends? Are you not sick? What a clever thing it is! God preserve you! Farewell, my. friends! ” To which the aeronauts suitably responded with shouts of ‘ God save the King!” They landed in a meadow,” and while they were receiving the ' congratulations of the “ Due de Chartres, the Duo de Pit'zJames, Mr Farrar, an English gentleman,” and others who bad followed them on horseback from Paris, “ thirty peasants held down the machine.” Little more than a year later an American physician, Dr Jefferies, and the Frenchman Blanchard (the inventor of the parachute) made the first crossing by air of the English Channel. Although they flung out all their ballast' and finally their clothing, piece by. piece, they were nearly wrecked. “We put on our cork jackets and were, God knows how, as merry as grigs to think how we should spatter in the water.” However, they struggled on to the French coast, to come down in a wood near Guides, “ not an inch of cord or, rope left, no anchor, or anything else to help us,” and “ almost as naked as the trees.” But a local reception committee was soon organised, and the adventurers were conducted to the nearby chateau of a M, de Sandrouin, where they “ received every polite attention,”' being led “ through a noble suite of apartments to partake of an elegant refreshment.” This was in January, 1785. Lighter-than-air travel was now well set on, that path of development which, whatever we may think of its ultimate prospects—whether it must still be regarded as one of aviation’s cul-de-sacs or not—has at least given us many achievements, enabled M. Piccard to explore the stratosphere, and evolved the world-encircling Graf Zeppelin. It was 124 years after this date before a heavier-than-air craft repeated the feat of Blanchard and Jefferies, in 1909, when Louis Bleriot flew the Channel in his aeroplane.

Previously acknowledged £4,783 17 11 St. Paul's Cathedral Chapter ... 14 0 0 Otago Master Grocers' Association (net proceeds of dance) 12 17 3 Brugh, Calvert, and Barraclough , 5 0 William G. ,., M - ,.. 0 10 0 . &#J, tw hh hm mm mmm a