Of all the treasures accumulated by the Society in the course of its long career, in some ways the most interesting is the oil painting depicting a river scene with a balloon overhead, which hangs in the Secretary's room. In spite of this I have never seen any account of it, and all trace of the means by which it came into the Society's possession seems now to be lost–unless by chance this note may catch the eve of someone still living who has knowledge of the facts. At first sight it seems to be merely one of the many fanciful pictures of a balloon ascent so common at the end of the XVIIIth century in the period immediately following the invention of the balloon, but some years ago I stumbled, more or less by accident, on certain facts that lift it out of the ruck. When I was, in 1924, collecting the material for my book, Aeronautical Prints and Draivinys, I came across an engraved portrait of Joseph Michel, the elder Montgolfier, joint inventor of the balloon.