All applications for the entry of publications as "second-class" matter are handled here, and to this bureau publishers come to arrange for the acceptance of their magazines and papers. After a publication is admitted to the mails at the second-class rate its columns are scrutinized to detect anything that infringes upon the regulations, and if anything is found, action is taken by this section. The law defines various classes of mail matter, and innumerable questions arise as to the class in which certain articles belong, many of the questions being difficult of determination and involving numerous technicalities, but here, sooner or later, all questions are settled. It is to this point, also, that the public comes for information as to the preparation of matter for the mails, how it should be wrapped, addressed, and posted; this section passes upon the mailability of matter under the lottery laws, which cover everything relating to prize schemes, contests, competitions, drawings, endless-chain schemes, etc. Many are the plans submitted, and while the law is rigid in respect to these matters, the field is alluring, and each day some novel proposition is submitted with the hope that it will not infringe the law, yet be attractive to the public through some subtle appeal to its gambling proclivity. _The Inquiry Department_ This is one of the most interesting departments of any post-office. The one at New York is under the supervision of Mr. William T. Gutgsell, and its functions are many. It handles all inquiries for missing mail, and during the year ended June 30, 1922, this amounted to 243,457. The number of inquiries, however, by no means equals the number of letters and packages which are found to be undeliverable. Undeliverable mail is disposed of by the Inquiry Section, and the magnitude of its work may be appreciated from the fact that no fewer than 150,000 letters were mailed without postage during the year. Among the other items that loom large in the report of the Inquiry Department is the number of letters directed to hotels which were not claimed by the addressees. Of these there were 1,200,000; 18,000 parcels of fourth-class matter were found without address, the delivery of which could not be effected, and 56,000 pieces of unaddressed matter were restored to the owners. In former years all letters and packages of value found to be undeliverable throughout the country and not provided with the cards of the senders were forwarded to the Division of Dead Letters at Washington, but on January 1, 1917, branch dead-letter offices were established at New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. The branch at New York is conducted by the Inquiry Section, and its work concerns Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York, 5074 offices being included. From this area last year there were received 3,518,604 pieces of undeliverable matter of domestic origin. A very