A.—4,

92

labour, which is paid on the completion of the work for which it was engaged. The Secretary distributes the necessary funds, in part to Sub-Imprestees, and in part to Pay Clerks, by whom the staff is paid and receipts are taken. The payments are generally completed about the fifth working day of the following month. When the Secretary returns his receipted vouchers to the Treasury, the exact amount disbursed is reissued to him, thus restoring the imprest to its original amount. At the end of each year the Imprest Account is closed, and the balance repaid into the Public Account. All the revenue received, and all the expenditure, whether for construction or for working the lines, are accounted for in the Accountant's office. The transactions are all passed through a journal and ledger by double entry; but the accounts are carried into the ledger in detail, making the work of balancing many hundred separate accounts one of great labour. Erom the ledger the entries are again abstracted under the several heads under which the expenditure is required to be shown in the printed accounts, which are presented to Parliament along with the annual report of the Commissioner of Railways. Railway tickets are printed in the Government Printing Office u.pon the order of the Traffic Auditor or the Accountant. A stock of tickets is kept in the custody of the Traffic Auditor, and tickets are ordered as wanted to keep up this stock. Tickets are supplied to the stations on requisitions from the Stationmasters, which are required to be sent to the Traffic Auditor every fortnight, the minimum stock required to be kept on a station is a fortnight's supply There is no maximum limit. The ticket ledger shows the number of tickets received from the Printer by the Traffic Auditor under the head of each station, and the issues to the stations, the balance being the stock in the Traffic Audit; but no account is kept in the head office of the issues by the stations. To discover the stock on hand at any station, the ticket ledger must be compared with the passenger returns of tickets sold. In the Stationmaster's requisition for tickets, however, he has to state the number of tickets on hand, and the closing number in the case. The Government Printer makes an independent return to the Commissioners of Audit of the number of tickets issued to the Traffic Auditor, and the books and stock in the latter are occasionally inspected by one of the Commissioners of Audit. Return tickets have been abolished except on the suburban lines. A considerable amount of revenue has been lost by this step, the price of single tickets having been reduced by one-third. No calculation was made, as in Sydney, of the proper reduction to be made so as to maintain the revenue unaffected by the change. The loss of revenue must be attributed to the reduction in the prices of single tickets having been greatly in excess of that required to equalize the new prices of single tickets with the average prices of single and return tickets formerly in use. The experience both in New South Wales and Victoria seems to show that the calculation made in the former, that the revenue would not bear a much greater reduction than 10 per cent, on the old prices of single tickets, was not very wide of the mark. On Saturdays excursion tickets are issued, which are in fact return tickets available till the following Monday night; but they are only issued in the summer months. Single tickets remain in force for one week from the day of issue if the journey is commenced on that day, and during such week the journey may be broken at any or every intermediate station. On each successive use of the ticket, the ticket collector stamps it, by means of a nipper with embossed figures, with a number indicating the station at which the holder stopped; and the ticket is similarly stamped at each point at which tickets are examined. Half-tickets for children are sold by cutting a triangular piece out of an ordinary ticket, but the numbers of the from and to stations are not, as in New South Wales, printed on the bit cut out. The Stationmaster, however, writes the number of the ticket on the triangles. These bits cut out are sent to the Audit in support of the accounts, where they can be compared with the collected tickets.