By means of this acknowledgement of payment, the direct taxes indicated on the acknowledgement of deposit and their additions can be paid in each post office, but only to the Central Office of Taxes of the city of Vienna (1. Town-hall). The tax-payer should indicate exactly and legibly, the sum paid, in figures and in letters, his name, profession and residence; he should also write down the tax in the columns designated for it indicating the kind. This condition not being fulfilled, the payment is not accepted by the post office. The tax-payers having a cheque-account in the Post Office Savings Bank can pay the taxes designated in this acknowledgement by a cheque sent to the Post Office Savings Bank at Vienna at the same time as this acknowledgement form, duly filled in. In this case the tax is only considered as paid on the day on which the cheque is entered in the books of the Post Office Savings Bank. Acknowledgements of payment on which alterations or erasures occur are not accepted.] The second class of operations of the cheque and clearing service of the Austrian Postal Savings Bank embraces the different modes of disposing of the property of the depositors who share in the service. The cheque is in a general way the instrument to which they recur under its two fundamental forms of cheques of payment and cheques of clearing, according as the amount is to be paid in cash or to be transferred to the account of another participant in the clearing service. The cheque books remitted to holders serve the double purpose; it has not been found necessary to print distinct documents, nor even to give to these two classes of cheques different colours. Cheque books containing fifty pieces are remitted to participants by the Central Office at the charge of 1 florin 50 kreutzers; this sum means 50 kreutzers, expense of paper and printing and 1 florin stamp duty. They are printed on the premises of the Central Office as are the attestations of receipts and deposits. About 2,500,000 of them are now annually reproduced and more than 23,000,000 of cheques have been issued since the official presses were first set up at Vienna. They are prepared either in German, or in any other language spoken in the Empire. Before sending them to the holders of an account the Office prints on each of these vouchers the number of the account for which they are to be used, as well as the name and address of the holder. (Fig. III.) Expressed in ordinary terms, the cheque states, that the Savings Bank will pay, on the voucher being forwarded, the sum of which the amount in florins has been written out in full. It bears the signature of the person drawing it. To avoid frauds in the statement of the sums to be paid, the Savings Bank has adopted moreover an arrangement so ingenious and sure that up to the present time no fraud has been noted.