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such particulars, or upon any of them, and the superintendent before 'whom the discharge is made shall, if the seaman desires, give to him or endorse on his certificate of discharge a copy of such report (in this Act referred to as the report of character); (2) The superintendent shall transmit the reports to the Registrar-General of Shipping and Seamen, or to such other person as the Board of Trade may direct to be recorded."

In the form approved by the Board of Trade, the characters to be stated on the seaman's discharge are set forth in a foot note on pages 3, 4, and 5 of the Official Log, and described as V.G. for "Very Good"; G. for "Good," or Dec. "Decline to report." Section 130 of the Merchant Shipping Act provides that if any person makes a false report of character, knowing — the same to be false, he shall in respect of each offence be guilty of a misdemeanour. There is not much scope allowed to the shipmaster under this official rule of three; he must not exercise his talent for describing the good, excellent, fair average, indifferent, middling, sober, bad, or worse qualities of | any of his crew either for ability or general conduct, except in the manner prescribed by the Board of Trade, for which there is no special enactment. Owing to the discharges having been made out in this fashion for many, many years, the information to be gathered from the records would only reveal that shipmasters had in certain cases 'declined to report," and whether they are few or many, the records will not show on 'what grounds, for the shipmaster who knows his business keeps that information to himself, as it is entirely his affair, though consuls, and superintendents of mercantile marine offices also, are not always free from a desire to interfere in matters with which they have nothing whatever to do. Thus recently, to quote a letter dated May 17, 1902, from the secretary of the Merchant Service Guild,

"The Consul-General at Havre in making his annual report spoke (or wrote) of not 'allowing' masters to give a 'decline to report' discharge unless he thought there was ground for it, and insinuated that masters were not in a manner fitted to have the extra power which the continuous discharges vests in them."

This affair put the Guild at once in communication with the Board of Trade, from which it appears that the Consul-General had to be officially informed that the responsibility of giving characters to the seamen employed on board a ship rests with the master alone. This is merely an instance of the ideas that obtain among those who ought to know a good deal better what their functions and powers are in matters of this kind, and those who frequent Mercantile Marine Offices in