Certain other duties, principally in connection with life-saving and wrecks, under the Board of Trade, have also been undertaken by the Coast Guard; but these, however valuable, do not constitute a _raison d’être_ for the Coast Guard, and it is quite feasible to make adequate local arrangements for carrying out these services, should the Coast Guard be removed. No more striking illustration of the feasibility of this can be given than the National Lifeboat Organisation, and to that body, aided perhaps by a Government grant, these services could, no doubt, be easily, economically, and efficiently transferred. Owing to the growing naval armaments of other Nations, and the consequent necessary increase in the Navy, the Admiralty has found it necessary carefully to consider the whole question of the expenditure under the Naval Votes in order to eliminate therefrom any services which are unnecessary from the point of view of immediate readiness and efficiency for war. About £1,000,000 of the Naval Votes is diverted to services which only indirectly concern the Navy, and are not material to the fighting efficiency of the Service. Of this about half (£500,000) is annually absorbed by the Coast Guard. From a Naval point of view the greater part of this heavy annual expenditure is wholly unnecessary, and it is also very doubtful, from what has been before pointed out, whether for Revenue purposes a force such as the Coast Guard is now required; while if it be still required in certain localities, it would be more economical to replace the present expensive Naval detachments by a Civilian service. By such a transfer the whole of the present expense of training men as a fighting force would be saved and there would be no deterioration in an important part of the Naval active personnel such as is now inevitable. There can be no comparison between the cost of a Revenue force and that of a Naval force, the cost of Naval training, which is very considerable, being dispensed with in the former case. Therefore, there is no doubt that, from the point of efficiency and economy, the substitution of civilians for Naval ratings would be a great saving to the State. OBSERVATORIES. _21st August, 1906._ In the past Greenwich Observatory has been of great importance to the Navy, inasmuch as all the data necessary for the navigation of ships by astronomical observation have been compiled there. The testing of chronometers has been carried out at Greenwich since their invention in 1762, while the Cape Observatory was instituted in 1820 in order to supply data concerning Southern stars not visible from Greenwich.