HOOLIGANS OF THE AIR.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 61, 12 October 1907, Page 3

HOOLIGANS OF THE AIR.

BALLUOX DROPS BALLAST OX A MAN'S HEAD. "THE AIR HOG." The road hog who whizzes through town and village leaving a cloud of dust and a trail of dead dogs and fowls behind him promises to be surpassed as a public nuisance by the air hog, now that ballooning is becoming a popular pastime.

.Mr F. P. Warren, writing to the Loudon Times, relates how, as he sat quietly reading in his garden in Gloucester road, Kingston Hill, the other night, a balloon glided over and greeted him with a shower of ballast. "Very god ballast, I have no doubt," says Mr Warren; "but when dropped into my garden it fulfilled Huxley's definition of dirt.

"What right," he asks, " has a balloonist to shoot his rubbish oil me and my property? I cannot think liis action is legally an act of God; but, If it is, what a prospect is in view for peaceful citizens if in a few years' time air travel becomes a fad of the vulgar rich! "Suppose I am peacefully tracking a snail to its lair, and I am suddenly assailed with the tea slops and heeltaps and broken oris of a millionaire's midair tea party.

"All my flock of bad words will peer out over the fence of my teeth ready for (light; my wife will tell Johnny and Amelia they must play more quietly, as poor dada is not feeling well, and a general "loom will settle over the place. Multiply the instance, and you have a country oppressed as if under the nomination of the Puritans."

As the man who flies through the air has a greater field for his nuisance developments than the man who flies along our roads, it may appear advisable, Mr Warren adds, to get a strong body of public opinion ready to crush the "air hog" as soon as he appears. ALL MANNER OF COMPLICATIONS. But supposing public opinion to be roused, how is the "air hog" to be dealt with? How is the action of airships live hundred feet or more above the earth to be regulated?

An Express representative put the question to Major Badcn-Powcll, a practical balloonist and aeroplane inventor himself. "1 told you so," he said. "There are going to be all manner of complications when the day of airships comes, and 1 think Mr Warren is a wUe man to start thinking about them. "But, first of all, 1 can explain how the incident of the unfortunate ballast happened. Lately they have taken to putting wet ballast in the bags, with the result that it falls in clots and lumps. Thai's how it is. If it had been dry ballast, the sand would have simply fallen in a soft, soothing shower that would have done no harm.

"I know a famous balloonist who, quite- recently, dropped wet ballast, and it smashed through a glass-house. A pure accident of course. The sort of thing that might happen to the best intentioned air traveller. The owner of tin; glass-house made inquiries, found out where the balloon started from, the name of the owaier, and well—l happen to know what the owner paid. I should recommend Mr Warren to claim for moral damages to his garden, if he can find the balloonist.

MATTER OE NECESSITY. "Vou see," continued Major Badenl'owell, "if your balloon is dropping, you cannot stop to consider what is underneath it. hi fact, you are particularly anxious not to find out what is underneath. You must throw out ballast. "So much for the present. As for the future, then- will really have to be serious legislation when airships become the fashion. But I do not see how you are troinjr to prevent millionaires emptying tea-slops on the heads of suburban resulcnls if they waul to. You could not take an airship's number; it would lie invisible at such a height Probably every airship would be forced to carry its own refuse box, and mid-air picnics would be forbidden."