to Lloyd's, in which case such advice is
embodied in their list.  So well known are the
facilities of this society for collecting first-rate
intelligence, that the Admiralty and the East
India Company frequently receive the earliest
intelligence through the medium of Lloyd's.

With this daily distribution of intelligence,
the labours of the secretary and his staff,
however, are by no means completed.  The
geographical arrangement of shipping news
in a series of carefully digested books is
found most useful to parties making inquiries
respecting vessels, the names of which may
be in question, but whose ports of destination
are known: they are of service, too, as at
once indicating the shipping transactions of
the several ports of the world.  One of the
most laborious, however, of the daily tasks at
Lloyd's, is that of writing up the enormous
Indexes to the shipping lists.  These are
contained in four thick folio volumes,
embracing the names of all ships known at
Lloyd's from A to Z.  The object of these
Indexes is to enable persons to trace out the
several voyages of any known vessel, or the
particular date of the departure or arrival of
any ship from or at any particular port in
years past.  Such date is needed more
frequently than might be supposed.  For
instance, we will suppose a shipper wishes to
forward goods to Calcutta by a fast-sailing
vessel; several are named to him as taking
in cargo, but he cannot ascertain which of
them is likely to make the best run out.  To
satisfy himself on this point he turns to
Lloyd's Indexes, and there he finds against
the name of each ship long lines of abbreviations
and figures in black and red inks.  These
abbreviations notify the port, the date, and
the particular column of a particular issue of
Lloyd's List, in which these several
movements may be found recorded; and, to
simplify this data still more completely, the
notices of arrivals are in black ink: those of
departures or casualties are in red. In this way
may be found recorded the passages of every
vessel known, to commence from the date of
its maiden voyage until it be at last entered
(in red) as having foundered.  It may be
mentioned that these Indexes contain the names
of forty thousand sea-going ships, our coasters
not being included amongst them.  So greatly
has the shipping of the world increased of late
years—especially that of Great Britain—that
the task of writing up these Indexes, which a
dozen years since occupied one person for about
six hours, is now the work of two index-keepers
from morning until the close of the office.

In addition to the supervision of this mass
of daily labour, the secretary has not only to
keep up the ordinary correspondence with
agents in all parts of the world, but to satisfy
persons making inquiries respecting the fate
of some ship, or of some friend—a passenger
or sailor by a vessel not heard of for a long
period.  To reply to these is certainly no
portion of the duties of Lloyd's secretary; yet
the arrangements made enable him to attend
to these letters, and to afford valuable and
interesting information.  It must be obvious
that from the very nature and extent of
the details of these operations, each day must
necessarily see its own work brought to a
termination; a single day's arrears would
fling the establishment into irretrievable
confusion, and seriously impair its usefulness;
and this is so well understood that, let the
amount of labour be what it may, all remain
at their posts until the last stroke of the pen
has been made.

The progress of an institution such as this,
marching onwards and expanding with the
pressure of the times, may well serve to
indicate the growth of commerce, not only in
our own land, but throughout the civilised
world.  Now, the oldest published Lloyd's
List in existence bears date 1745, and is in
possession of the Committee of Lloyd's, being
somewhat more than a century old; we are
thus enabled to draw a tolerably accurate
comparison between the shipping operations
of the middle of the last century, and the
middle of the present century.

The old Lloyd's List appears to have
been the last that was published once in the
week; it is printed on a narrow slip of
paper about a foot in length; and, besides
containing the price of bullion and the stocks,
gives the rates of exchange on foreign
countries; these are on one side.  On the
reverse is what was then termed "the
Marine List;" which gives a list of twenty-
three arrivals and twelve departures at
English ports, with thirty-four ships at anchor
in the Downs.  There are also notices of four
arrivals in Irish and foreign ports, with
advice of three British ships taken by the
enemy's privateers. Turning from this
document, which gives a week's news, to one of
the year 1800, published daily, we find it
contains on an average notices of seventy-five
ships.  This was in time of war: and,
comparing numbers, we find the ships noticed
as ten to one against the previous date.
Following up the comparison, we turn to a
Lloyd's List for 1850; one of the fullest of
these covered fifteen pages in the Arrivals
and Loss books for one day, giving the
names of about four hundred and sixty vessels,
being six times the number of those in 1800,
and as numerous as the lists of one entire
year in the previous century.

A just idea of the importance attaching to
shipping advices by underwriters and others,
may be formed from the number of casualties
of all kinds occurring on the seas in all parts.
The documents existing at Lloyd's show
these were, in the year 1847, not less than
about two thousand two hundred; of which
as many as eight hundred were instances of
ships abandoned at sea, or wrecked.  In 1850,
the total casualties of all descriptions were
still heavier, having been about three thousand
six hundred.  These figures do not include