If the children are committed to the care of private people, or institutions, these have to be approved of by the Governor in Council, five shillings a week being paid for each child boarded out to private people; unless it should be that they are voluntarily adopted, which is very often the case. I have not the faintest idea how many children are yearly adopted from hospitals and other institutions in Melbourne, but, judging by the number of cases I myself have come across, I should imagine it to be very large. In some ways people seem more humane, more primitive in Victoria than in England; certainly they are less easily reconciled to a childless home. They do not have large families, but if they have no child at all it is very common indeed for them to adopt one. Certainly I never personally knew anyone of wealth and good position in England to adopt a nameless child; but in Victoria I can bring to mind several cases in which this has been done, and the utmost care and love lavished upon it, while it never for one moment hears a single word that can cause it to doubt that the father and mother, of whose love it is so sure, are its own. Over the little boarded-out baby the supervision is most especially strict. The whole administration of the Infant Life Protection Act, which was passed in 1890, and amended in 1907, has lately been taken out of the hands of the police, and put under the care of the Department for Neglected Children, to whom power is given to establish maternity homes and infant asylums. Any person who boards an infant must be registered; male or female inspectors must be permitted free access to the house, and allowed to examine the children, and give any necessary advice or directions, while no one is allowed to board out a child without first applying to the secretary of the Department, stating what amount he or she is prepared to pay weekly for its maintenance, no baby less than twelve months old being allowed to be boarded out under ten shillings a week, and all payments having to be made through the secretary. If these payments fall into arrears for four weeks the child becomes a ward of the State, while a penalty of £100, with or without imprisonment, is incurred for receiving or making payment for any infant contrary to the regulations of the Act, while it further provides that no illegitimate child—or boarded-out child—under the age of five years, who has died in such registered home, may be buried without a certificate from a coroner, justice, or member of the police-force. That the need for such reform was pressing is shown by the vital statistics of the State for 1908; the number of illegitimate births being 1,790, and the deaths of these children under one year of age 354, the proportion of deaths among illegitimate children being between two and three times as great as that among children born in wedlock.