The greater part of the Board’s work is carried on by correspondence, partly with commissioners and partly with Government. The new letters are served up daily to each member in boxes, with all the important papers connected with each question. Lucid notes and suggestions are put up by the secretary subordinate to the member, so that the order to be issued can usually be passed with comparatively little difficulty, especially if the secretary is a man of practical experience and sound ability. There is, therefore, a smooth as well as a rough side to a seat in the Board. The member can, if he pleases, dispose of much of his correspondence in the quiet solitude of his own house. He is practically master of his own hours, and of his time for going to office and for leaving it. Sometimes a member spends the whole day at his office, and an instance has been known where a very zealous member actually took up his abode at the Board, so as to work uninterruptedly on some difficult subject on which he was engaged. On the other hand there have been members who only visited their office fitfully and carried on the greater part of their work at home. The members of the Board are also at liberty to make tours of inspection into the interior, and, in fact, they are authorised and encouraged by Government to make such tours, and occasionally they are expressly deputed by Government to visit a particular district to inquire and report upon some difficult question. So upon the whole the members of the Board lead a pleasant and well-employed life individually, although they often enjoy collectively the abuse and enmity of those who are under their authority; and, on the other hand, the Government usually takes advantage of the Board’s intervention to give them the discredit of anything that does not turn out satisfactorily, and to appropriate to itself the credit of anything that has been done well. So that the Board still continues to fulfil its old mission as a convenient screen.