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William Blackwood, the founder of the firm of the name, saw service in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and London before opening in 1804 as a bookseller at 64 South Bridge, Edinburgh. Blackwood continued in his bookselling capacity for a number of years, and his shop became a haunt of the literati, rivalling Constable's in reputation and in popularity. His first success as a publisher was in 1811, when he brought out Kerr's Voyages, an ambitious item, and followed shortly after by The Life of Knox by McCrie. About this time he became agent in Edinburgh for John Murray, and the two firms did some useful collaborating. Blackwood was responsible for suggesting alterations in The Black Dwarf, which drew from Scott that vigorous letter addressed to James Ballantyne which reads: “Dear James,—I have received Blackwood's impudent letter. G ‐ d ‐ his soul, tell him and his coadjutor that I belong to the Black Hussars of Literature, who neither give nor receive criticism. I'll be cursed but this is the most impudent proposal that was ever made”. Regarding this story Messrs. Blackwood say: “This gives a slightly wrong impression. Scott was still incognito. William Blackwood was within his rights. He was always most loyal to Scott.” There has been some controversy as to the exact style of this letter, and it has been alleged that Lockhart did not print it in the same terms as Sir Walter wrote it. Blackwood came into the limelight as a publisher when he started the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine in 1817, which was to be a sort of Tory counterblast to the Whiggish Edinburgh Review. He appointed as editors James Cleghorn and Thomas Pringle, who later said that they realised very soon that Blackwood was much too overbearing a man to serve in harness, and after a time they retired to edit Constable's Scots Magazine, which came out under the new name of The Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany. [Messrs. Blackwood report as follows: “No. They were sacked—for incompetence and general dulness. (See the Chaldee Manuscript.) They were in office for six months only.”] Blackwood changed the name of The Edinburgh Magazine to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, and became his own editor, with able henchmen in John Wilson, Christopher North, John Gibson Lockhart, and James Hogg as contributors. It was a swashbuckling magazine, sometimes foul in attack, as when it told John Keats to get “back to the shop, back to plaster, pills, and ointment boxes”. Lockhart had a vigour of invective such as was quite in keeping with the age of Leigh Hunt, an age of hard‐hitting. The history of Blackwood in those days is largely the history of the magazine, though Blackwood was at the same time doing useful publishing work. He lost the Murray connexion, however, owing to the scandalous nature of some of the contributions published in Maga; these but expressed the spirit of the times. John Murray was scared of Blackwood's Scottish independence! Among the book publications of Blackwood at the period we find Schlegel's History of Literature, and his firm, as we know, became publisher for John Galt, George Eliot, D. M. Moir, Lockhart, Aytoun, Christopher North, Pollok, Hogg, De Quincey, Michael Scott, Alison, Bulwer Lytton, Andrew Lang, Charles Lever, Saintsbury, Charles Whibley, John Buchan, Joseph Conrad, Neil Munro—a distinguished gallery. In 1942 the firm presented to the National Library of Scotland all the letters that had been addressed to the firm from its foundation from 1804 to the end of 1900, and these have now been indexed and arranged, and have been on display at the National Library where they have served to indicate the considerable service the firm has given to authorship. The collection is valuable and wide‐ranging.

The Minister of Health, after consideration of the representations made to him and after consultation with the Minister of Agriculture, has made the new Milk (Special Designations) Order, which will come into operation on June 1st next. The new Order has two main objects—to transfer from the Minister to local authorities the duty of granting licences to producers of certain graded milks and to improve and simplify the special designations of milk.

I was fairly certain that I had explored most aspects of Whitehaven history. However this town of endless surprises had yet one more to spring on me. On his return my plumber friend unwrapped a parcel: it contained a ship's log — not the official one, but one kept by an apprentice on a voyage to the far east in the early nineteenth century — and the minute book of the Whitehaven Literary Society, 1820–1822. Of all the material things written about White‐haven very little has been said about its cultural activities. For the development of an interest in art it should be said by the way that the town owes a debt to William Gilpin of Scaleby Castle, the agent for Sir John Lowther of Whitehaven. Directly through his patronage of Matthias Read, and indirectly through his son and grandsons Gilpin contributed not a little to the promotion of painting in Cumberland and elsewhere.

NO MAN OF LETTERS has ever more closely identified himself with his country's historical lore and traditions than Sir Walter Scott: as poet and novelist his place in Scottish literature is secure. Abbotsford, the house he transformed into a replica of a medieval Scottish baronial castle, all turrets and gables, weapons and armour, is a national literary shrine. The memoirs of his life and work written by his son‐in‐law, John Gibson Lockhart, are widely acknowledged as a biographical tour de force. All this is well known and needs no emphasizing here. It is therefore all the more strange that the library he built at Abbotsford and the sizeable collection of books he amassed there have received very little attention in recent years. He has rarely been mentioned as one of the great book collectors, yet many of the books and broadsheets to be found in his library are now almost unprocurable elsewhere. A study of an eminent author's library always proves rewarding and the library at Abbotsford is no exception. Indeed, perhaps even more than usual, this particular library reflects the literary interests of its owner. Certainly, Scott's love of books very quickly emerges.

It is a pleasure to write these lines on the Report of Proceedings under the Diseases of Animals Acts for the year 1934. The report is addressed by the Chief Veterinary Officer to the Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. It is a record of most important duties efficiently carried out by the central veterinary authority and the local veterinary authorities in Great Britain during the aforesaid year. Reading “ between the lines ” of the necessarily formal and official wording of the report it is easy to appreciate the extreme complexity of the scientific, administrative and economic problems these various authorities are confronted with in the course of their work. Problems that have to be quickly and satisfactorily dealt with. Admittedly, we owe much to the fact that we are an island, but this fortunate geographical circumstance would not avail us much unless it were inforced by efficient administration and veterinary knowledge kept up to date by research and collaboration with the veterinary world at home and abroad. It is remarked that no cases of cattle plague have been reported since the year 1877 ; no cases of sheep pox—the Peel's pox of an earlier generation of farmers—since 1850 ; no pleuro‐pneumonia since 1898.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the education of children at St Helena Penal Establishment in Queensland and the trials faced by the educators that delivered their formal schooling. The paper will add to the growing research into the prison island and will provide an insight into a unique facet of education in the newly established Australian State of Queensland.

The historical analysis draws on original documents and published works to chronicle the provision of education to the children of warders at the St Helena Penal Establishment.

The establishment of the Department of Public Instruction and the introduction of the State Education Act of 1875 were intended to provide Queensland children from 6 to 12 years of age with free, compulsory, and secular primary education. The full implementation of the Act took until 1900, and in the process, initiatives like St Helena State School No. 12, through issues of administrative control, saw teachers excluded from the Department of Public Instruction in order to include schoolchildren under the auspices of the same department.

The research paper is an initial investigation into the subject and limited by the paucity of primary data available on the topic.

The case study adds to the growing literature on other aspects of the prison at St Helena, Queensland and adds to knowledge of life on the island. Furthermore, the aspects of control over staff on the island and the requirement for the teachers to double as guards, ready to take up arms in defence of the prison, provides new insights into the obligations placed on some early educators.

IF SONS DID NOT EXTOL, many a worthy father would sink into oblivion and forever go unsung. As filial biographers, however, sons customarily meet with intimidating scorn and derision. There is a generally accepted notion that consanguineous biography is fraught more with fealty and filial frailty than with disinterested depiction. The best way to disprove this false assumption is to muster meritorious biographies written by scions and compare them with representative biographies of the ‘blame and blemish’ variety. Sympathetic assessment always stands up stronger than ostensible objectivity, for writers of the ‘warts and all’ kind of biography lose track of virtues and nearly always become engrossed in the imperfections of their victims.