responsible for the decrease.  As so often happens, the opposing interests, disagreeing on all else, find that best of peacemakers, a common enemy, in the Government.  The Department is responsible—­for two opposite reasons, it is true, but somehow they seem to confirm each other.  We must labour to find some other common ground, starting from the recognition that the salmon fisheries are a national asset which must be made to subserve the general public interest.  I assure my friend that when all parties make their proper contribution in effort and in cash, the Department will not be backward in doing their part.

At the end of this interview a messenger brings a telegram for ‘himself’ from a stockowner in a remote district.[47] ‘My pigs,’ runs one of the most businesslike communications I ever received, ’are all spotted.  What shall I do?’ I send it to the Veterinary Branch, which, with the Board of Agriculture in England, is engaged in a scheme for staying the ravages of swine fever, a scheme into which the late Mr. Hanbury threw himself with his characteristic energy.  The problem is of immense importance, and the difficulty is not mainly quadrupedal.  Unless the police ‘spot’ the spotted pigs, we too often hear nothing about them.  I am sure it must be daily brought home to the English Board, as it is to the Irish Department, that an enormous addition might be made to the wealth of the country if our veterinary officers were intelligently and actively aided, in their difficult duties for the protection of our flocks and herds, by those most immediately concerned.

So far it has been an interesting morning bright with the activities out of which the future is to be made.  The element of hope has predominated, but now comes a visitor who wishes to see me upon the one part of my duties and responsibilities which is distasteful to me—­the exercise of patronage.  He has been unloaded upon me by an influential person, upon whom he has more legitimate claims than upon the Department.  He has prepared the way for a favourable reception by getting his friends to write to my friends, many of whom have already fulfilled a promise to interview me in his behalf.  His mother and two maiden aunts have written letters which have drawn from my poor Private Secretary, who has to read them all, the dry quotation, ’there’s such a thing as being so good as to be good for nothing.’  The young hopeful quickly puts an end to my speculations as to the exact capacity in which he means to serve the Department by applying for an inspectorship.  I ask him what he proposes to inspect, and the sum and substance of his reply is that he is not particular, but would not mind beginning at a moderate salary, say L200 a year.  As for his qualifications, they are a sadly minus quantity, his blighted career having included failure for the army, and a clerkship in a bank, which only lasted a week when he proved to be deficient in the second and dangerous in the third