HOOLIGANS OF THE AIR.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXIX, Issue 225, 23 September 1907, Page 3

HOOLIGANS OF THE AIR.

The increasing popularity of ballooning, and the possibility that we will soon to able to fly, are causing people to wonder what will be done to check the "air-hog," as the hooligan in the air is called. The person who whizzes through a village amid a cloud of dust, and leaves a trail of dead dogs and fowls behind him, promises to be surpassed by the aeronaut who drops things carelessly out of his balloon. A resident in a London suburb, writing to The Times, gives an amusing account of the Avay ,in which a passing balloon greeted him with a shower of ballast as he was sitting quietly reading in his garden. He has no doubt it was good ballast, ' but when, dropped into my garden it fulfilled Huxley's definition of dirt." The writer imagines himself "peacefully tracking a snail to his lair," and suddenly " assailed with the tea slops and h.eel-taps of a millionaire's midair tea party." "What right has a balloonist to shoot his rubbish on me and my property? I cannot think his action is legally an act of God; but, ii it is, what a prospect is in view for peaceful citizens if in a few years air travel becames a fad of the vulgar rich?" Major Baden-Powell, an authority on these matters, confesses that he does not see how millionaires are to be prevented from emptying slops on the heads of suburban residents if they want to. It will be impossible to take an air-ship's number' when it is five hundred feet in the air. But there is no danger from ballast so long as it is ory. Dry ballast falls ill a "soft, soothing shower," but when it is wet it forms into lumps and hits the earth with some force. The best-intention ed traveller may break a greenhouse and know nothing about it, while the injured party may regard him as a holigan of the worst type. A well-known balloonist dropped some wet ballast through a greenhouse the other day, and the owner took the trouble to find out who he was, and recovered damages. "You see," said the Major, " if your balloon is dropping, you cannot stop to consider what is underneath it. You must throw out ballast."—Press.