Chief in the Home Packet Service is perhaps the mail service between Holyhead and Kingstown. In the old days Milford and Holyhead were both stations for the Irish mails, but Holyhead has always held the premier position, and now Fishguard has supplanted Milford. Here is a copy of an old advertisement published in 1810 in a Dublin newspaper. It will show how the service was performed in the days before steam navigation:— “Notice is hereby given that the Postmasters-General are willing to receive Proposals for a Contract, for a period not exceeding seven years, for Two Stout Wherries of from forty-five to fifty tons burden for the performance of His Majesty's Express Services between Dublin and Holyhead.” This is one of the stormiest and most uncertain of channel passages, and the express services occupied anything from seven to twenty hours or longer in making the voyage. The _Ulster_, _Munster_, _Leinster_, and _Connaught_, the fine vessels of the City of Dublin Steamship Company, have a speed of 23 knots an hour, and keep excellent time. The Isle of Man Steam Packet Company's vessel, _Ben-my-Chree_, averages 24 knots at sea. There are fine services between Southampton and Weymouth and the Channel Islands, and services slow but sure to the western islands of Scotland and the distant Shetlands. There is one British island at least which has no regular mail service, but occasionally improvises a curious service of its own. St. Kilda is a remote island lying off the west coast of Scotland about 50 miles from the nearest land. The scenery is wild and rugged, sheer cliffs rising from the sea in some parts to a height of 1250 feet, and covered by myriads of sea birds. There are about sixteen cottages on the island and eighty inhabitants. Two or three times a year during the summer a tourist steamer calls there, but the island is cut off from the mainland from August to May except for the occasional visit of an Aberdeen trawler. The islanders, left to their own resources, endeavour to open up communication with the mainland in this manner. They construct a sheepskin buoy, and the letters are enclosed in a tin canister with sufficient money to pay postage, and a wooden label is attached bearing the inscription: “St. Kilda mail. Please open.” The mail can only be launched with a hope of success in a gale of north-west wind, which drives it across to the island of Lewis, a distance of 60 miles. In a gale of this kind in 1905, the mail arrived on the shores of Lewis within two days. In the mail boat was found money to defray the cost of the postage. The dealer who sells in Glasgow and London the tweed woven by the St. Kilda islanders received half-a-dozen letters. They were salt with the lime of the sea, and in places scarcely legible. One of the islanders wrote: “Very few of the trawlers have visited us this year owing to the bad weather. I wish we could hear how you are all getting on on the mainland, and especially how the Churches are progressing.”