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therefor, and these Colonial warrants have been sadly neglected. But another factor has been in existence. With that sublime interference with which one Government Department encroaches on another the Admiralty has published in the official book of authorised flags the devices for the various British territories beyond the seas which it considers suitable for use upon the flags of the Governors of the different Colonies. Most of these are wrong and usually ap-palling. Then in another direction we bave the Mint supplying seals with devices more or less heraldic, and there has been always the native imagination inventing home-made coats of arms which found their way on to the official stationery and often even on to the coins and postage stamps. Then we even got to the length of the Colonial Office authorising a flag for Australia, which I have always thought was the extreme limit. The Royal Warrant assigning arms to any territory ought to have preceded the making of its first seal; but the actual fact was that until a few years ago Jamaica, Gibraltar, Nova Scotia, Cape Colony, and Canada were the only Colonies which had genuine arms, whereas every Colony used something or other.

I hope I am not telling secrets when I say that it was no high-browed desire for righteousness which initiated the recent reform. As a matter of fact the requirements of the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace proved to be the operative factor. But I do want to enter my protest against the ghastly enormities which have been perpetrated by Royal Warrant under the guise of Colonial arms. The great bulk are appalling monstrosities. There is no other way of describing them. What could be worse, for instance, than the arms of the Leeward Islands?-and these are official. Some of the earlier Colonial arms—Jamaica, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundiand-are arms to which no exception can be taken. The arms, moreover, granted in the reign of Queen Victoria to Canada and its Provinces, or to Cape Colony, are quite good. But there has recently been a large number of Warrants issued to Colonies. There seems to be about a large proportion a uniform level of artistic rottenness which surpasses all previous conception. The fault lies with the Colonies, which have insisted on the perpetuation of existing devices.

There are many Towns in the self-governing Dominions which are using bogus arms or have no authentic arms; in fact, the only towns outside the United Kingdom to which grants have been made are:-Kingston (Jamaica), Bombay, Calcutta, Cape Town, Pretoria, Johannesburg, and Sydney.

Very few British counties have as yet obtained arms. In England it was held that nobody existed in a county competent to bear arms until the formation of the County Councils. In most cases the arms of the County Town did duty, but there were cases in which separate arms for the county were in use; Middlesex, Kent, and Surrey were instances. But since the formation of the County Councils several grants have been made. West Sussex was the fist, Shropshire was the next; then came Lancashire, Middlesex, Norfolk, and Somerset. The London County Council, after a particularly

iniquitous heraldic career, has at last obtained a grant, no doubt because the fees were forthcoming from a private source, as indeed was the case with both West Sussex and Shropshire.