Ordinarily a probationary superintendent is not allowed to act as a superintendent until he has had a practical training in postal work; that is to say, he performs the duties of a postmaster, accompanies a superintendent on tour and is given an insight into the general working of the Department in the offices of the Postmaster-General and Superintendent. There is no minimum period fixed in which a probationer, when fully qualified, must receive a permanent post. It depends on the vacancies that occur in the sanctioned cadre; but experience has shown that the period seldom exceeds two and a half years, and the average is two years and two months. Postmasters are generally recruited from the lower ranks of the Department, such as sub-postmasters and clerks, who usually start their careers as probationers. The exceptions to this rule are the probationary postmasters, who are specially selected in order to improve the personnel in the higher appointments. APPENDIX B EXTRACTS FROM EARLY REGULATIONS REGARDING THE MAIL SERVICE An extract from the Consultations, 17th January, 1774, gives in detail the arrangement made by Warren Hastings for the improvement of postal arrangements. The President lays down before the Board the following plan for the better regulations of the Dauks and for forming a General Post Office:-- The present management of the Dauks is attended with many inconveniences. Private letters are exempt from postage and the whole expense of the establishment falls upon the Company. The Dauks from the same cause are loaded with packages of the most frivolous kind and of unreasonable weights. The privilege of sending private letters by the Dauks being confined to the European inhabitants, affords but a partial aid to the necessary intercourse of trade. The establishment is branched out into various departments, all independent and unconnected, the expense partly defrayed by ready-money payments and partly by taxes on the zemindars and farmers, who make an advantage of them in the deductions of their rents. From all these causes the establishment is involved in a labyrinth of obscurity, without checks and without system. The delays on the road are often greater than those of common cossids or couriers without a possibility of correcting them, because it cannot be known by whom they are occasioned. Of these delays the President himself has had repeated proofs insomuch that whenever he has had occasion for extraordinary despatch he has made use of express cossids, and these never failed to exceed the regular Dauks by nearly half the space of time employed by the latter for the same distance. The loose and irregular manner in which the letters are received and distributed exposes the correspondence of individuals and even the public despatches to great delays and to the risk of being lost or intercepted.