THE history of the Institution during its first century of work has now been completed, and will be published in the early autumn of this year by Messrs.

Hodder & Stoughton, with the title " Britain's Life-boats : A Century of Heroic Service." It will be the first complete and authoritative record of the work and development of the British Life-boat Service, the oldest in the world. It has been written by Major A. J. Dawson, who is the author, among other books, of " The Message " and " The Land of His Fathers," and who, as a seaman, as a traveller in most parts of the world, and as a soldier in the Great War, has brought to the writing of it not only his practical experience of the sea, but a wide knowledge, as he says in his preface, " of what brave men will endure, and what they will suffer and accomplish in the service of great causes." H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, as President of the Institution, has written an Introduction, and Mr. Joseph Conrad a Foreword. The history, which will have thirty-one pages of illustrations, will be sold at 7s. 6d. net, and there will also be a limited edition de luxe, of which each copy will be signed and numbered, at two guineas.

It will be a book which will need no recommendation to all who work for or contribute to the Life-boat Cause, but, for the benefit of others, we will quote the last sentences of the Prince of Wales's introduction :— " Such a story cannot but be read with pride by all British men and women. Above all, it must stir the heart of every British boy and girl, to whom it ought, through these pages, to become familiar, for it is one of the noblest parts of our heritage as a great seafaring race".