A new parachute was tried in the presence of a
vast audience at the Alexandra Palace last Saturday, Mr. Baldwin leaping from a balloon which had risen to a height variously calculated at from 800 ft. to 1,200 ft., and trusting to his parachute (which was closed at first) to break his fall. He fell like a stone for 300 ft., when the parachute (a big umbrella) gradually inflated itself under the upward pressure of the air, and Mr. Baldwin then came gently down, alighting in a meadow just beyond the Alexandra Palace grounds, amidst great cheering. His success does not, however, in the least prove that his parachute is any better than many other parachutes by which aeronauts have at times descended safely from very much greater heights, while at other times they have been killed by the failure of the parachute to act as it was intended to act. It seems to us certainly one of those cases in which the game is not worth the candle. Besides, what attracted the great crowd was the excitement of the risk, not their confidence in the scientific character of the parachute, and that is a very objectionable sort of spice to heighten the flavour of a popular amusement.
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