Like most human activities, ballooning has sponsored heroes and hucksters and a good deal in between. For every dedicated scientist patiently recording atmospheric pressure and wind speed while shivering at high altitudes, there is a carnival barker with a bevy of pretty girls willing to dangle from a basket or parachute down to earth.

a farther paſſion feeds my thoughts, With ceaſeleſſe and diſconſolate conceits, Which dies my lookes so liueleſſe as they are, And might, if my extreames had ful euents, Make me the gaſtly counterfeit of death.

This plant evidently occupies, like V. sabulosa and V. Curtisii, an intermediate position between lutea and tricolor; and, as I have indicated already, it is a montane, not an agrestal plant. Jordan compares it to V. vivariensis, which is also a montane plant, between V. tricolor and V. lutea.

It was the hour before the first crowing of the cocks, and along with Nyo Boto and Grandma Yaisa's clattering, the first sound the child heard was the muted, rhythmic bombpabombpabomp of wooden pestles as the other women of the village pounded couscous grain in their mortars, preparing the traditional breakfast of porridge that was cooked in earthen pots over a fire built among three rocks.