“It is estimated that when the line earns over 6 per cent., the contributions of the company and the staff will be about equal; as the profits increase, the company’s contribution will most probably be the larger of the two. The board are of opinion that the creation of such a fund will be most acceptable and beneficial to the staff in numerous ways; and so far as the company is concerned, the effect of it being to give every servant, who can influence its success, a direct personal interest in the economical working of the line, it can scarcely fail to be advantageous.” Although the Secretary of State for India has sanctioned the arrangement, and the shareholders of the company, at their meeting held on the 2nd of July last, approved of, and agreed to its adoption, we doubt whether it is one that is likely to prove satisfactory to the officials, especially to those from Europe. The practical operation of the scheme is this. Henceforth, the Europeans are, from the moment of their appointments, to he subjected to a deduction of 5 per cent. from the nominal amount of their salaries, but the company is not to contribute to the fund until after the net earnings have amounted to 6 per cent. and upwards; thus, if these earnings were declared at the rate of £5. 19s. 11d. per annum, the shareholders would receive, firstly, 5 per cent., and secondly, the half of 19s. 11d., under the contract between the Government and the company; the Government would receive the second half of the 19s. 11d., and the Provident Fund _nil_. This scheme should be altered. The deduction of 5 per cent. from salaries is too high, and the contributions of the shareholders and of the Government should commence at a much earlier step in the scale of net earnings. The rolling stock provided for Indian railways is miserably insufficient. The number of locomotives possessed by all the companies on the 1st of January, 1867, was only 795, not quite one engine for every five miles. The other descriptions of plant are equally defective in point of numbers. The East Indian Company announced, in its report of January last, that it intended to make up its rolling stock for a traffic of £60 a mile, at a cost of about £300,000. The other companies will have to outlay at least half-a-million on rolling stock almost immediately.