IN nine of the thirteen foreign countries ! which have National Life-boat Services, the Service is voluntarily maintained ! like our own, though, in some cases, with I grants-in-aid from the State. In the remaining five it is maintained by the ; State. In four of the countries which now have voluntary Services it is interesting to note that State Services I were originally established, but that i they have since been either replaced or supplemented by voluntary Services.

I In two, Germany and Spain, the State Service was taken over entirely by a voluntary Society. In the other two, Norway and Sweden, the greater part of the work is now done by the voluntary Society, but there are also a few Stations independently maintained by the State.

An account of the Norwegian Volun- tary Society, which was founded in 1891, appeared in The Lifeboat in November, 1922, written by Captain Ottar Vogt, the Society's Secretary. We have now received from the Superintendent of Lighthouses, by whom the State Life- boat Stations are administered, the fol- lowing particulars about these Stations.

The first Norwegian Life-saving Stations were established in 1854 and 1855 by the State in the districts of Jaedeven and Lister, at the southern- most point of Norway on the North Sea and Skaggerack. In these years five Stations were established, and, later on, Stations were established at another five places.

Thus there are now ten Life-saving Stations on the coast of these two districts, all equipped with rocket apparatus or line-throwing gun, while three, those at Osthasselstranden in Lister, and Kvalbein and Vik in Jaedeven, have Life-boats as well. Each district has a superintendent, and each Station a superintendent and a crew of two men for the rocket apparatus or line-throwing gun. The three Stations with Life-boats have, of course, full boat's crews, and superintendents and crews are all chosen from among the local population.

With the twenty-seven boats of the voluntary Service, Norway has thus a fleet of thirty Life-boats, but it should be remembered, as Captain Ottar Vogt wrote in his article, that the boats of the voluntary society are not stationed at one spot to deal with shipwrecks in their immediate area, but are cruising Life- boats. " The fleet is working all the winter in the open sea in the great arteries of shipping traffic, or it is moving from place to place, from ground to ground, and is regulating perennially its movements according to those of the fishing-fleet." That is the essential difference between our own Service and the Norwegian..