will state the fact to the Secretary of War for his action. The commanding officer will immediately appoint a high-toned and careful officer to act as assistant post commissary to receive the provisions from the hands of the contractors for the prisoners. It shall be his duty to attend personally at every issue by the contractors. He will see that the precise amount called for at each issue is weighed out and delivered to him, and that it be the net and not the gross weight of the provisions that he receives. The quantity of the ration drawn by him and issued to the prisoners will be that allowance prescribed by the board of council and the amount over this allowance will be at each issue not drawn from the store-house, but charged to the contractors, and at the end of the month the commissary who pays the contractors for stores will deduct the price of this amount not issued and turn the sum of money over to the commanding officer of the post, to e disposed of by him as is elsewhere prescribed by the commissary-general of prisoners. The commanding officer will ascertain by daily examination what part of the ration should be thus reserved and how much, while he preserves, however, the amount set down by the "board of council" (a list of which accompanies the instructions to the commanding officer) as a general standard to guide him. Upon receiving the provisions the officer appointed for that purpose as above referred to shall place them in charge of the steward of each prison who will immediately issue them to the different messes of the prisoners, under his (the commissary officer's) personal superintendence. The whole duties of the prison stewards shall hereafter be to issue to each mess in proportional amounts the provisions and the fuel and quartermaster's stores. Fresh beef will hereafter be issued five times a week instead of twice as heretofore, not only to the prisoners but to all troops at the post, and necks and shanks will not be issued as part of the ration as heretofore.

As the prisoners have used milk to secretly correspond, in evasion of prison regulations, the sale of it hereafter or furnishing it to them in any manner is prohibited. Each prisoner until further orders will be allowed as heretofore one plate, cup, knife and fork and such cooking utensils as with the arrangements for cooking the commanding officer deems requisite. The "fund" of the prisoners which will accumulate in the manner above detailed will be kept separate from the fund of the other troops at the post. The same officer detailed as above described to attend to the issues to the prisoners of commissary stores will also personally supervise the drawing from the contractors, weighing and issuing to all troops at the post the rations supplied by the contractors. Such portions of the rations as the commanding officers may find by daily experience may be well spared by the troops will not drawn, but will be dealt with in the same manner as already directed for the prisoners, thus providing for the accumulation of a post fund of the prisons.

In order to systematize the records of the post the commanding officer will cause to be kept at the post a reception book, in which will be entered the date of the confinement of prisoners and all data necessary for a complete description of them and of their history as forwarded to the commanding officer, with the exception of the charges against them, which will be kept in a book used solely for the purpose of recording the charges under the immediate care of the commanding officer. A large description report book will be kept of the same form as already described to the commanding officer and a ledger containing the accounts of the prisoners' funds; also a morning report book of prisoners, the form of which has been already given to the commanding