The industrial revival in Ireland has also had its beneficial effect on the Irish flour milling trade. Irish millers recognise that the effects of the movement are twofold-first, the direct effect causing a preference in favour of Irish goods, and, secondly, the beneficial effect of more extensive employment in Ireland resulting in increased opening for the sale of flour and other goods.

While the direct effect is not of the same vital importance to millers as to some other industries, for Irish millers can stand on their own feet and meet with confidence and overcome competition from anywhere in the world, even if no preference be given, yet the secondary effect, the raising of the population and earning power of Ireland is to millers of the utmost importance, as their natural opening is the home market, and the consumption of flour is directly proportional to the population and its standard of living.

The Irish Flour Millers' Association has therefore officially ranged itself in alliance with the Industrial Associations, and not only do many Irish flour millers individually take active parts in the work of these bodies, but the Millers' Association is directly represented on the Council of the Irish Industrial Association (Incorporated) which has control of the Irish Trade Mark and is, generally speaking, the legal arm of the industrial movement. It is fitting, too, that millers should be so represented, seeing that so large a number of the Irish millers are users of the National Trade Mark, a larger proportion, indeed, than obtains in any other class of manufacturers in the country.

A very striking, if unpleasant, testimony to the excellence of the products of Irish mills and to the strength of the industrial movement, is the large number of English firms trying to push the sale of their flour in Ireland by the use of misleading Irish titles on their bags and labels. Although this is also being done in many other trades, it is perhaps done most frequently in the case of flour. As far as it is possible to do so the Millers' and Industrial Associations are endeavouring to check the practice, which some English mills carry as far as at the time of writing, trying to register Irish names as Trade Marks.

At the present time the Irish Flour Millers' Association, in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture, is taking practical steps towards the encouragement of the cultiva

tion of wheat in Ireland. It has been very strongly felt by Irish millers that their trade has everything to gain by the extension of the growing of Irish wheat, directly, in the increased supply of available raw material, and, indirectly, by the gain to the country in the employment of labour in tillage. The matter to both farmers and millers is largely a question of price, and while the world's wheat markets are, of course, not susceptible to any influence Irish farmers or millers can bring to bear, there is no reason why an endeavour should not be made to raise the value of Irish wheat relatively to the wheats imported from foreign countries. Now, to millers the value of wheat is proportional to its suitability for milling and the worth of the flour and other products obtainable from it, and farmers have to consider, not merely the yield of wheat per acre, but the price obtainable for the wheat when grown. The yield will depend upon the suitability of the seed to the land, and the price obtainable for the wheat will depend upon the worth of the products the miller can get from it. To ascertain this is a matter for experiment, and with this aim in view after several discussions between the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction and various Farmers' Associations and the Irish Flour Millers' Association, the Department have made arrangements with farmers in several districts to grow trial plots of wheat from various kinds of seed and report on yield, etc., and have made further arrangements through the Millers' Association to have the wheat thus grown milled and a report given of its qualities and value from the millers' standpoint. Information will thus, it is hoped, be obtained as to the most paying kind of wheat suitable to the soil of each district.

Probably the output of Irish mills to-day is as large as ever it was in the past, in spite of the fact that there is still a good deal of flour imported, and that in the long ago times there was an export trade in flour from Ireland. For it must be remembered that bread made from wheaten flour is now the staple food of the masses, whereas in former times it was only used constantly by the few. Till lately statistics of wheat and flour imports and exports have not been available, and even now are not obtainable at certain ports. The following figures, however, may be of interest showing, as they do, the increase in output by Irish mills.

(Note.-The quantity of flour produced from a given quantity of wheat is about 70 per cent.):

The milling industry is of importance not only to those directly or indirectly engaged or employed in it, but to the whole agricultural community, because the by-products of flour, bran and pollard are among the best of feeding stuffs used for horses and cattle, and it must be borne in mind that owing to the bulky nature of these commodities rendering their carriage expensive they are necessarily disposed of

in the country where the flour is milled. In other words, for every ton of flour imported as such there is produced and sold in the country where that flour is milled about a half a ton of bran and pollard, which increases the available supply for agriculturists in that country (who are possibly competing with our own farmers in the sale of stock) and lessens by that much the supply of feeding available in Ireland. It is noteworthy for the first time in recent years that this year the prices of mill offals in Ireland have been lower than in England, showing that the increased output of Irish flour has already begun to have its effect in this direction. W. E. SHACKLETON.

Irish Music.

In considering the present aspect of Irish music, looking back upon the work accomplished during the past few years, and noting the real earnestness of the workers; one is still tempted to the conclusion that; though there has been much enthusiasm, there has been very little real progress. Yet, upon deeper consideration of facts and results, the vista palpably improves and it is evident that, though small may be the actual advance, much has been tested and proved. It might be said that to many a thoughtful Irishman the music of the Gael is the most ancient and the most beautiful of music, and that his sole other musical conviction is that modern musicianship, if applied to develop its latent beauty or wield it into classic form, would destroy its most cherished graces. The experience of the past few years has gone very near to prove that though this idea may be a very noble one, a pleasurable and, in a way, a patriotic sentiment, it is an unpractical and entirely unprogressive one, and it is falsified by much that takes place whenever a traditional performer appears upon the stage.

By the work of the past few years much that was obscure has been placed in a clearer light, the true ring of musical originality has been in a way re-sought for, recognised, and rediscovered in the feasant performer. That the talent as well as the love for music (always acknowledged as part of the Irish character) is allied to that of invention has been proved to demonstration by the "traditional" performer at the Oireachtas and feiseanna throughout the country. Much that the musician laboriously acquires comes to him without effort or instruction, and surely much of that which is so often misnamed traditional may with more certainty and truth be taken as original; full of resource, the peasant performer is seldom at a loss for a graceful turn or phrase to fit the passing sentiment. Yet he has decidedly not been a success upon the concert platform. And why? He has the genius, he wants the art, he has lost the tradition. Through him and by him many fine melodies have been preserved; and many more of so modern a character that they must be almost