with this latter invention, the patentee of the Decauville railway system, supplemented the committee’s grant to the extent of £10. In a note to last year’s report, the firm state that they have decided to increase the maximum grant from £10 to £12, and the minimum from £2 to £3; and that in the case of two men being engaged at the same invention, should it be found worthy of an award, each will receive at least the minimum award of £3. A still more recent announcement states that “whenever any workman has received as many as _five_ awards from the committee, reckoning from the time the scheme came in force, he shall be paid a premium of £20, when he has received as many as _ten_ awards he shall be paid a further premium of £25—the premiums always increasing by £5 for every additional five awards received.” Already, it may be stated, four separate workmen have received _five_ awards, and become the recipients of the £20 premium. With regard to the employment of females in Messrs Denny’s yard, it may be interesting to state further that the total number generally employed throughout the works amounts to between 80 and 100. In addition to the numbers employed in the decorative and upholstery departments, already noticed, a large contingent are engaged in the polishing rooms, and a further number in the drawing offices as tracers. The employment of females as tracers in shipyard drawing offices, it may be stated, is of recent date. The system had previously been in operation at the locomotive works of Messrs Dübs & Co., and Messrs Neilson & Co., of Glasgow. Having proved a success there, it has been gradually adopted by shipbuilding and engineering firms on the Clyde, and more recently on the Tyne. The staff in Leven Shipyard consists of 20 members, four of whom are employed in the experimental tank department. All the girls are selected by written competitive examination, the subjects of examination being arithmetic, writing to dictation, and block-letter printing. At first it was intended the girls should simply be trained as tracers, but they displayed such aptitude that to tracing was added the inking-in of finished drawings and the reduction of plans from a greater to a less scale. This they do with a very fair degree of accuracy and neatness. The experienced members of the staff are now employed making displacement calculations, including plotting the results to scale, centre of buoyancy, and metacentre calculations; calculations of ships’ surface, working up and plotting of speed trial results, stability calculations. Most of these calculations are made out on prepared printed schedules, and the whole of the work is superintended by a member of the male staff. In the work of calculation the girls, it may be stated, make large use of such instruments as the slide rule, Amsler’s planimeter and integrator. To secure clearness and