The returned stores form a large item of the business. Instruments get out of date as well as out of repair. These are examined by an officer, who decides whether they shall be sold complete, or broken up and sold as brass, ebonite, &c. It pays to break up instruments, if, for example, they contain platinum, but on the other hand, for instruments such as bells, switches, &c., there is a limited demand, and these are sold in small lots by auction. It is a matter of some difficulty to determine, and it has frequently to be decided by experiment, what instruments can be broken up, and as the demand is very limited, how many complete instruments can be released from stock without affecting the price. Storeboys do most of the breaking up of instruments, and useful parts are retained for stock. Nobody can be relied on to break up anything with more of the joy of life than a boy. Lead-covered cable is stripped in the factories for sale as copper and lead, and gutta-percha for sale as copper wire and gutta-percha strippings. Superintending Engineers throughout the country are allowed to sell locally certain stores such as old iron, iron wire, and poles, but other valuable stores are sent to London for disposal. There are two or three general tender sales of old stores in the year, and special sales of copper and lead are arranged whenever the accumulations or the state of the market require it. But the scrap-heap of the Post Office is of the dimensions of a mountain. There are also returned postal stores, which come under the name of condemned material. These are sold for what they will fetch. In one year the Department obtained £1800 for clothing and rags, £850 for string, and £700 for boots. Accumulations of used string are disposed of also locally by certain postmasters. Here is indeed an example in domestic economy. The Stores supply in response to requisitions a quantity of postal stores to the Colonies and British post offices abroad. There are British post offices at Ascension, Beyrout, Constantinople, Panama, Salonica, Smyrna, and Tangier. I must not omit to mention the Awards Committee of the Post Office, which exists to encourage workmen and other Post Office servants to bring forward suggestions for improvements in machinery, tools, apparatus, &c., and lists of the awards are published from time to time in the Post Office Circular. The Postmaster-General, in a recent report, stated that “since the operations of the Committee began, the Post Office workmen have displayed greater interest in their work.”