The post office and its story an interesting account of the activities of a great government department

The sections devoted to Foreign and Colonial Mails will also interest the Bradshaw enthusiast. The Postal Union has had the effect of levelling the rates to something approaching to uniformity, but the varieties in distance remain. The Guide gives the approximate time for the journey of a letter, and we understand the method. Train and boat will take you to Paris now in something over eight hours. The Post Office, allowing for sorting, &c., at each end, will take your letter over the same distance and deliver it to the addressee in ten hours. Correspondence to Berlin takes 23 hours in transmission, to St. Petersburg 61 hours, Constantinople 90 hours, and so on. You can ascertain from the Guide the route your letter will take, and you are clearly told what you must not send by letter post to certain countries. Australia will not accept opium, tobacco, or rabbit poison; China will not take cocaine, opium, and morphia; Denmark declines almanacs except those relating to literary subjects; Italy refuses all our patent medicines and articles of apparel, playing-cards, feathers, perfumes, “and other things.” We should be very careful, considering the last phrase, what we send to Italy. New Zealand objects to cuttings of grape vines and printed editions of English copyright books and music; Persia jibs at “pictures of the human form and packets of pictorial postcards”; Roumania will not have religious pictures, photographs and reproductions of pictures from foreign history, soiled newspapers, or playing-cards; Russia objects to everything almost except a letter, especially printed matter. The Straits Settlements decline opium, morphia, morphine, cocaine, spirits, and bhang. This is the only country which declines bhang. Trinidad refuses “Rough on Rats” (poison): it is the first experience we have met of humanitarianism towards rats. Most countries object to coin, gold, silver, precious stones, and jewellery.