Dr. Fishbourne, who is an expert, says of Kew Asylum :-" I wouldn't send a dog there." The Chief Secretary, who is no expert, trots over the institution, and says it is a very nice place, He found the floors washed and the patients in clean bibs and tuckers, and what more could any reasonable lunatic demand ? The expert asks that the asylum be something more than a mere storehouse for maniacs, and thinks it should be first and foremost a hospital devoting the best energies of its staff to the work of ministering to the mind diseased. At present the asylum is run on lines implying an "assumption that the brain disordered to day must necessarily be disordered to the end, and for a disorderly patient there is one prescription, the strait-jacket. The Government's policy towards the lunatics seems to be that of the attendant caught beating a patient in an English asylum. "Gentle treatment" ; he said scornfully, " what's the good of givin' the beggars gentle treatment ; they're too mad to appreciate it?' And yet the patients are often sane enough to distinguish between good and bad, comfort and discomfort. It is recorded of one inmate at a Melbourne asylum that he said of an official :-" He's madder than we are. We stay here because we are compelled to stay ; but he stays of his own accord."-" Atticus" in the " Leader."