A paper read at the Society of Arts on Wednesday, Feb. 15, 1899; Captain Baden Powell, Hon. Secretary to the Aeronautical Society of Groat Britain, in the chair.

In the first years of the century, the Russian Academy organised, at St. Petersburg, what may be regarded as the earliest balloon ascent for genuine scientific research. One chief object which they had in view was to determine any difference in conditions existing at various altitudes above plain country as compared with those observed by Humboldt, Saussure, and ethers a t like elevations on mountain heights, and that this is even still an important line of inquiry for which balloons are eminently well suited, I shall hope to make sufficiently clear. The experiments proposed, which, to–day, read quaintly suggestive', were to include an investigation of the power of solar rays, of the existence of electric matter, and of the intensity of the colours of the prism. No results of consequence, however, were obtained.