MR. J. R. BARNETT, O.B.E., M.I.N.A., of the famous Glasgow firm of Messrs.

G. L. Watson, retired at the end of July from the post of consulting naval architect to the Institution, and the Committee of Management, as some small mark of their appreciation of his .long and distinguished services, have awarded him the Institution's gold badge.

Mr. Barnett has been the Institution's naval architect for forty-three years.

He'succeeded the late Mr. G. L. Watson in 1904, and for seventeen years before that date he had carried out Mr.

Watson's life-boat designs, so that his personal association with the Lifeboat Service has extended for sixty years.

These two Scotsmen have been principally responsible for the design of all life-boats built during those sixty years.' They are the fathers of the modern life-boat fleet, and of its 154 motor lifeboats to-day 86 are of types named after them, the Watson and the Watson Cabin, the Barnett and the Barnett Stromness..