The use of water and steam as fire extinguishers is frequently abortive, and causes unnecessary damage to the cargo; but nowadays there are scientific appliances which are much more effective for extinguishing outbreaks that may occur on board ship, and these are recommended for use at the ports and docks. In 1906, the New Zealand Government appointed a Royal Commission to inquire into the causes of fires occurring on ships which carry such commodities as wool, flax and tow. Besides recommending that every ship engaged in the carrying trade of this nature should be fitted with a chemical fire-extinguishing system, the Commission reported that the cause of fire in the case of flax and tow would seem to have been usually other than that of spontaneous combustion, but the very nature of these articles makes them especially liable to fire from extraneous causes. With regard to wool, however, there was evidence for supposing that spontaneous combustion does take place. A steamship problem of an entirely different nature is that which concerns the commissariat department. In the olden days, when travellers were accustomed to remember that they were voyaging on a ship, matters were fairly simple and straightforward; but now that the ship has become a floating hotel, and the passenger expects to live quite as well as, if not more luxuriously than, on shore, the problem of being able not merely to feed two or three thousand people for a week or longer, without being able to touch port, but to supply most of the dainties which are only found in the best equipped land restaurant has assumed large dimensions. The days when salted meat was the staple sustenance of the sea traveller have long since gone, and to-day even the steerage passengers are catered for in a manner that is at least humane, even if it is scarcely luxurious. All this has been brought about by the influence of more comfortable living ashore, as well as by the keen competition between the rival steamship companies to hold out alluring incentives to the potential passenger. The work in connection with the culinary department has grown so enormously as to necessitate the employment of mechanical contrivances wherever possible. Thus, for instance, on some of the Atlantic liners the coffee-mills instead of being turned by hand, are driven by steam-engines and electromotors. Ingenious boiling apparatuses for eggs; machines for cutting meat, for mincing, whipping cream, straining, dish-washing and drying without the need of using towels, making bread, filtering water and many other purposes are employed, and the perfection of these minor machines is scarcely less admirable than that of the engines whose sole service consists in propelling the ship across the ocean. Some of the Norddeutscher Lloyd steamships have recently availed themselves of a new invention for carrying live fresh-water fish, so that they may come fresh to the table. This innovation was first made on board the _Kaiser