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

The public are advised to affix a label marked “Fragile” to any parcel which requires more than ordinary care in handling, and from time to time wonderful examples of fragile parcels have been met with. A pair of boots wrapped in brown paper has been so described, so have a plum pudding in a cloth, a basket of fish, a box of butter, a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica, a York ham, an iron bolt wrapped in corrugated paper, and a roll of blankets. Wicker receptacles are not suitable for the service with the Colonies: the parcels would not be sufficiently protected during the long voyage and railway journey. For this traffic parcels are packed in tightly fitting boxes unless the contents can safely be sent in sacks made of double canvas. As the practice increased of packing parcels in canvas sacks rather than in wicker baskets, difficulties were experienced in finding supports for the sacks during the process of packing. Every schoolboy knows that a basket stands on its own bottom, but an empty sack falls flat. Officials with a mechanical turn of mind vied with one another in suggesting how to evade or to get round this natural law— in other words, how to support the sacks— and eventually the Dockree support was chosen. This consists of four iron arms extended at right angles from a pedestal, each arm being constructed to support a sack at full length and with the mouth open. An improved pattern of this holder, capable of supporting eight open-mouthed sacks at one time, has recently been introduced. A sorter is thus able to sort into eight mouths at once without any of the stooping which was unavoidable when the sacks lay limp on the floor.