The Chairman of the Failsworth, Lancashire, Urban District Council, Mr. George Edge, has adopted the lifeboat service as his particular charity during his year of office and is trying to persuade a thousand organisations or individuals each to raise a thousand halfpennies. A local newspaper has agreed to publish a progress report from time to time in the form of a barometer.

* * * For the third year running the York motor boat club has raised a substantial sum for the Institution, in this case £70, by taking visitors on river cruises to the Archbishop's palace at Bishopthorpe. The ladies' committee of the club provided light refreshments at the club house.

* * * Visitors to the Plumbers Arms at Redditch are allowed to borrow darts if they put a coin in the life-boat collecting box in the bar.

* * * At the request of his parents a man living in Upminster, Essex, gave to the Institution the money which he would otherwise have spent on a present to mark his parents' golden wedding anniversary.

* * * At a garden fete held by the Stanmore branch the names of fifty life-boat stations were written on separate pieces of paper and hidden in the garden.

Competitors were charged a shilling each to enter for a prize which was awarded to the person who found the largest number of pieces of paper containing station names.

* * * Mr. R. Anderson of Seven Kings, Ilford, and Mr. E. May, an old age pensioner, of Forest Hill, London, S.E.23, both gave to the Institution the money they had saved by not having to pay fares during the London bus strike.

* * * A member of the Crayford and district branch committee has trained her budgerigar to fly over her ship halfpenny box when she has visitors and to say : " Have you any ship halfpennies ? " Miss Jacob, honorary secretary of the Burnham-on-Crpuch branch, provides her friends with free milk from her own Jersey cow, but asks them to make a contribution to branch funds.

* * * A fishmonger in Hornsey supplies his customers free of charge with parsley, but asks them to put a contribution into his collecting box.

* * * Mr. H. W. Rubins of Deal, a foremancarpenter employed on a contract by Concrete Piling Ltd., recently received a reward for salvaging a marker-buoy belonging to the Whitstable yacht club and promptly gave the full amount of the reward to the Institution.

* * * A branch committee member, who wishes to remain anonymous, has persuaded her husband, who likes expensive hair shampoos, to allow her to wash his hair and to give to the branch funds the money which it would otherwise have cost him.

* * * Messrs. Revell (Great Britain) Ltd.

donated the whole of the profits from the sale of plastic assembly kits at the "Do It Yourself Exhibition" at Olympia, London, to the Institution, the amount received being £100.

* * * The Cloughey branch received a cheque for £40, being part proceeds of a local donkey derby.

* * * Miss Nicola Mann and five other girls of St. Paul's Girls' School, London, raised £3 9s., for the Institution from the sale of a magazine written and produced by themselves.

* * * Two thirteen-year-old North Shields girls, Ann Jenkins and Margaret Wood, raised more than a pound for the Institution from the sale of toffee apples which they made themselves.

* * * The wife of the Holy Island honorary secretary. Captain I. B. B. Robertson, sold her crop of lavender in beribboned bags, giving all the proceeds to the Institution.

Four girls and two boys living in Inverurie, Aberdeenshire, raised more than £20 for the Institution from admission money to a zoo containing monkeys, parrots, budgerigars and other animals.

In the life-boat collecting box outside the Belgrave hotel at Tenby a sovereign and a half sovereign were recently found. The coins were sold by auction, the sovereign fetching £5 and the half sovereign £3..