Still in its infancy, the international money-order system has already reached importance in the magnitude of its operations. The sums sent by means of it were, in 1874, $1,499,320 to Great Britain, $701,634 to Germany, and to the little inland republic of Switzerland $72.287. The dimensions to which this new method of financial intercourse between the different peoples of the globe is destined to reach may be inferred from the growth of the domestic money--order service. In 1874 the number of orders issued was 4,620,633, representing $74,424,854. The erroneous payments having been but one in 59,677, it is plain that this mode of remittance must make further inroads on the old routine of cheque and draft, and become, among its other advantages, a currency regulator of no trifling value. Our post-office may almost be said to head the development of the century. The other lines of progress in some sense converge to it. The advance of intelligence, of settlement, of transit by land and water and of mechanical and philosophical discovery have all fostered the post, while its return to them has been liberal. Thus aided and spurred, its extension has approached the rate of geometrical progression. Its development resembles that from the Annelids to the Vertebrata, the simple canal which constitutes the internal anatomy of the simplest animal forms finding a counterpart in the line of mails vouchsafed by the British postmaster-general to the colonies in 1775 from Falmouth to Savannah, "with as many cross-posts as he shall see fit." Fifteen years of independence had caused the accretion of wonderfully few ganglia on this primeval structure. In 1790 four millions of inhabitants possessed but seventy-five post-offices and 1875 miles of post-roads. The revenue of the department was $37,935--little over a thousandth of what it is at present under rates of postage but a fraction of the old. New York and Boston heard from each other three times a week in summer and twice in winter. Philadelphia and New York were more social and luxurious, and insisted on a mail every week-day but one, hurrying it through in two days each way, or a twentieth of the present speed. On the interior routes chaos ruled supreme. Newspapers and business-men combined to employ riders who meandered along the mud roads as it pleased Heaven.