THERE has been some very encouraging news of the activities of youthful supporters of the life-boat service. The junior section of the Edinburgh branch, which has been growing steadily in strength, recently organised a junior gymkhana at a local farm and raised over £11. At Bembridge School in the Isle of Wight a life-boat club has been formed. The president is Edward Colquhoun ; the age limit for members is eighteen ; and membership is not necessarily confined to boys at the school. The subscription is 2/6d. a year; donations have been received; and articles sold at a jumble sale ranged from clock-work railways to fudge.

* * * In the past twelve years the Cromer branch has received more than £500 from the competition for the Life-boat Cup for which junior football teams in the district compete. The cup competed for today was presented by the honorary secretary, Major E. P. Hansell, and the revenue comes from the considerable gates.

* * * Mr. Jack James, the foreman for the contractors building the new life-boat station at Kilcobben Cove, found a bottle with a message in it and a request that the message should be passed to some people in Cheshire. Mr. James did so and was rewarded with 10/-, which he presented to the Lizard branch.

* * * Miss Margaret Hughes mounted her pony and went collecting in the sea from yachtsmen at Talsarnau.

* * * Mrs. Wade of Forest Row presented the post-war credit due to her son, who was killed at sea in 1944, to the Institution.

Messrs. Dean, Smith and Grace Ltd., of Keighley have installed an automatic cigarette machine on their premises for their employees. Each halfpenny which comes as change from the insertion of a florin goes to charities, one of which is the life-boat service.

* * * The Port Erin Ladies' Life-boat Guild held a barbecue, at which hot- dogs were sold and there was singing and dancing to guitars. The profit amounted to more than £15.

* * * Mrs. Morris, honorary secretary of the Newcastle-under-Lyme branch, has been making up packets of seed gathered from flowers in her garden and selling them for the benefit of the life- boat service.

* * * Hill and Osborn's Garage at Burnham Market has a life-boat collecting box into which contributions are put, in return for having air pumped into tyres.

* * * In memory of an occasion when a British merchant ship was wrecked off the coast of the United States in 1944 a man who wishes to remain anonymous has presented a trophy to be competed for annually at a Scottish golf club for the benefit of the Institution.

* * # Mrs. Lockitt, a member of the com- mittee of the Newcastle-under-Lyme branch, acts as an agent for a firm producing Christmas cards, and gives the commission she receives to the branch funds.

* * # Mr. H. Sawyer of Wrentham near Beccles staged an exhibition of old lamps for the benefit of the Institution.