Frequent exception has been taken by correspondents to discrepancies in the tonnages of individual vessels given in these reports, as compared with the tonnages measured by the Board of Trade officials, and entered in their records. Attention was called to this matter at the close of 1883 by a correspondent in _Engineering_, whose assertions were afterwards corroborated in other journals. From a careful checking of the returns made by the Glasgow press of the shipbuilding on the Clyde for the three previous years this correspondent maintained that the aggregate tonnage was overstated to the extent of about 11,000 per year, or over 34,100 tons for the period named. One very gross instance of the misstatement complained of was given by a second correspondent writing to the _Glasgow Herald_, who drew attention, along with the returns of other firms, to that of a firm building the smaller class of vessels, who were stated in the _Herald’s_ account to have produced 8,300 tons, when by a careful comparison with the actual tonnages of the vessels as recorded in Lloyd’s Register, their total output was found to fall short of the figure given by as much as 2,172 tons, equivalent to 35 per cent. of the actual output. In commenting on these discrepancies several obvious considerations suggested themselves to the critics: such as possible misapprehension, caused by the existence of several kinds of “tonnages,” and the difficulty of stating accurately the tonnages of vessels recently launched. It was questioned, however, after all such allowances were made, whether those furnishing the figures could be exonerated from the sin of carelessness, or indeed, of pure falsification with the view of figuring prominently in the list. The accuracy of these criticisms has not in any way been disproved, nor has any satisfactory explanation been offered.