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Bible Encyclopedias
New Zealand
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
or A British colonial Dominion (so named in 1907), consisting mainly of a group of islands lying in the south Pacific between 34° 25' and 47° 17' S., and between 166° 26' and 178° 36' E. The group is situated eastward of Tasmania and Victoria, and Wellington, its capital and central seaport, is 1204 m. distant from Sydney. Of certain outlying clusters of small islands belonging to the colony, the Chathams (356 m. E. of Cook Strait), Aucklands and Campbell Island are alone of any value. All these are grassy and the Chathams are inhabited by sheep-farming colonists. The Aucklands contain two of the finest harbours in the Pacific. Six hundred miles north of Auckland, the volcanic Kermadecs, covering 8208 acres, are picturesquely clothed with vegetation. In Polynesia a number of inhabited islands were brought under New Zealand control in 1893. Rarotonga and Mangaia, in the Cook group, and Niue or Savage Island are the largest of these; Penrhyn and Suwarrow, though but small coral atolls, contain excellent harbours. Rarotonga is hilly, well watered, and very beautiful. Apart from these little tropical dependencies New Zealand has an area of 104,471 sq. m., of which its two important islands, called North and South, contain 44,468 and 58,525 respectively, while, divided from South Island by Foveaux Strait, Rakiura or Stewart Island, mountainous and forest-clad, contains 621 sq. m. These three form a broken chain, North and South Islands being cut asunder by Cook Strait, a channel varying in width from 16 to 90 m.
North Island is 515 m. long and varies in breadth from 6 to 200 m. It is almost cleft in twain where the Hauraki Gulf penetrates to within 6 m. of Manukau Harbour. From the isthmus thus formed a narrow, very irregular peninsula reaches out northward for some 200 m., moist and semi-tropical, and beautiful rather than uniformly fertile. Rich strips of alluvial soil, however, seam a cold clay-marl, needing intensive cultivation to become highly productive. Buried in this clay-marl are found large deposits of the fossil resin which becomes the kauri gum of commerce; and on the surface extensive forests are still a great though diminishing source of wealth. Though a species of mangrove fringes much of this peninsula, its presence does not denote malaria, from which the islands are entirely free.
South of the isthmus aforesaid, North Island rapidly broadens out. Its central physical feature is the unbroken mountain chains running N.E. from Cook Strait to East Cape on the Bay of Plenty, ranges seldom under 3000 ft., but never attaining 6000 ft. in height. Ikurangi, their highest summit, though a fine mass, does not compare with the isolated volcanic cones which, rising W. of the main mountain system and quite detached from it, are among the most striking sights in the island. Ruapehu (9100 ft.) is intermittently active, and Ngauruhoe (75 1 5 ft.) emits vapour and steam incessantly. Egmont (8340 ft.) is quiescent, but its symmetrical form and dense clothing of forest make it the most beautiful of the three. North of the two first-mentioned volcanoes Lake Taupo spreads over 238 sq. m. in the centre of a pumice-covered plateau from loon to 2000 ft. above the sea; and round and beyond the great lake the region of the thermal springs covers 5000 sq. m. and stretches from Mount Ruapehu to White Island, an ever-active volcanic cone in the Bay of Plenty. The most uncommon natural feature of the district, the Pink and White Terraces, was blown up in the eruption of Mount Tarawera in 1886, when for great distances the country was buried beneath mud and dust, and a chasm 9 m. long was opened in the earth. Fine lakes and waterfalls, innumerable pools, in temperature from boiling-point to cold, geysers, solfataras, fumaroles and mud volcanoes still attract tourists in large numbers. The healing virtue of many of the springs is widely known. The government maintains a sanatorium at Lake Rotorua, and there are private bathing establishments in other places, notably near Lake Taupo. In South Island there are hot pools and a state sanatorium at Hanmer Plains. Experience shows that the most remarkable cures effected by the hot waters are in cases of gout, rheumatism, diseases of the larynx and in skin disorders. Though, thanks to the overlaying porous pumice, the Taupo plateau is not fertile, it has a good rainfall and is drained by unfailing rivers running through deep terraced ravines. The Waikato and Waihou flow N., the Rangitaiki N.E., and Mokau, Wanganui and Rangitikei W. or S.W. The first named, the longest river in the colony, though obstructed by a bar like all western, - and most eastern, - New Zealand rivers, is navigable for some 70 m. The Mokau and Wanganui run between ferny and forest-clad hills and precipices, often of almost incomparable beauty.
. East of the Taupo plateau and south of Opotiki on the Bay of Plenty the steep thickly-timbered ranges held by the Uriwera tribe still show scenery quite unspoiled by white intrusion. On the southern frontier of this mountainous tract Waikare Moana extends its arms, the deepest and most beautiful of the larger lakes of the island.
From the mouth of the Waikato southward to about 25 m. from Cape Terawhiti on Cook Strait, and for a distance of from 20 to 40 m. inland, the western coast skirts fertile country well fitted for grazing and dairy-farming, to which it is being rapidly turned as the timber and fern are cleared away from its low hills, downs and rich valleys. On the east coast the same fertility is seen with less forest, and, round Hawkes Bay, a hotter and drier summer. In the south centre, the upland plain of the Wairarapa, ending in a large but commonplace lake, has a climate adapted for both grazing and cereals. The butt-end of the island, of poor, rough, wind-beaten hills, is redeemed by the fine harbour of Port Nicholson, which vies with the Waitemata. in utility to New Zealand commerce. Broken as is the surface, poor as is the soil of certain tracts, there is but little of the island which will not ultimately be cultivated with profit as pumice and clay-marl yield to labour. Everywhere the settler may count. on a sufficient rainfall, and - except on the plateau and the mountain highlands - mild winters and genial summers. The pleasant climate has certain drawbacks; the coastal farmer finds that blights and insect pests thrive in the comparative absence of hard frosts. Fortunately mosquitoes are not a serious plague outside a few marshy localities. To pass Cook Strait and land in the middle province of South Island is to pass from Portugal to Switzerland, a Switzerland, however, with a seacoast that in the east centre is a dull fringe of monotonous sand dunes or low cliffs. As a rule, nevertheless, the shores of South Island are high and bold enough. They are not too well served with harbours, except along Cook Strait, in Banks Peninsula, and by the grand but commercially useless fjords of the south-west. In the last-named region some fifteen salt-water gulfs penetrate into the very heart of the mountains, winding amid steep, cloudcapped ranges, and tall, richly-clothed cliffs overhanging their calm waters. The dominating features of south New Zealand are not ferny plateaus or volcanic cones, but stern chains of mountains. There the Southern Alps rise range upon range, filling the whole centre, almost or quite touching the western shore, and stretching from end to end of the island. West of the dividing crest they are forest clad; east thereof their stony grimness is but slightly softened by growths of scrub and tussock grass. Nineteen-twentieths of the colonists, however, live east of the dividing range, for to that side settlement was attracted by the open, grassy character of the country. The rivers are many, even on the drier eastern coast. But, as must be expected in an island but 180 m. across at the widest point and yet showing ridges capped with perpetual snows, the rivers, large or small, are mountain torrents, now swollen floods, anon half dry. Almost useless for communication or transport, they can be easily drawn upon for irrigation where, as in the east centre, water-races are useful. The largest river, the Clutha, though but 80 m. long in its course to the south-east coast, discharges a volume of water estimated at nearly i,ioo,000 cubic ft. a minute. On the west the only two rivers of importance are the Buller and the Grey, the former justly famous for the grandeur of its gorges. Large and deep lakes fill many of the mountain valleys. Te Anau and Wakatipu (54 m. long) are the chief, though Manapouri is the most romantic. Aorangi (Mt. Cook) is easily first among the mountain peaks. Its height, 12,349 ft., is especially impressive when viewed from the sea off the west coast. On the north-east a double range, the Kaikouras, scarcely fall short of the Southern Alps in height and beauty. Apart from the fjords and lakes the chief beauties of the Alps are glaciers and waterfalls. The Tasman glacier is 18 m. long and has an average width of 1 m. 15 chains; the Murchison glacier is io m. in length. To the west of Aorangi glaciers crawl into the forest as low as 400 ft. above sea-level. Among waterfalls the Sutherland is 1904 ft. high, but has less volume than the Bowen and others. The finest mountain gorge, the Otira, is also the chief route from the east to the west coast. It begins on the western side of Arthur's Pass, a gap the floor of which is 3100 ft. above the sea. Generally the opqn and readily available region of South Island extends from the Kaikouras along the east and south-east coast to the river Waiau in Southland. It has a mean breadth of some 30 m. In compensation the coal and gold, which form the chief mineral wealth, are found in the broken and less practicable west and centre, and these portions also furnish the water-power which may in days to come make the island a manufacturing country. (W. P. R.) Geology. - New Zealand is part of the Australasian festoon, on the Pacific edge of the Australasian area. Unlike Australia, its geological structure is unusually varied, and owing to its instability, it includes, for its size, an unusually complete series of marine sedimentary rocks. It has, moreover, been a volcanic area of long-continued activity. The physical geography of New Zealand is closely connected with its geological structure, and is dominated by two intersecting lines of mountains and earth movements. The Southern Alps, the backbone of the South Island, rest on a foundation of coarse gneisses and schists, that are quite unrepresented in the North Island. The continuation of this line of old rocks is occupied by the basins of the Wanganui river and Taupo. E. Suess therefore suggested that the northern continuation of the Alps had foundered, and its summits been buried beneath the Pliocene marine rocks of the Wanganui basin and the volcanic rocks of the Taupo area.
The oldest rocks are Archean, represented by the band of gneisses and schists exposed along the western foot of the Southern Alps. To the south of the district in southern Westland, where the Alps have passed out to sea, the Archeans become more extensive; for they spread eastward and underlie the whole of the dissected tableland of Otago. It has been suggested that the ,jasperoids and diabases of the Tarawera Mountains on the North Island may be of Upper Archean age, from their resemblance to the Heathcotian rocks of Australia. No Cambrian rocks have as yet been discovered, but the Ordovician system is represented by the Aorere beds in the north-western part of the South Island. Here they contain numerous graptolites, including Tetragraptus, Dichograptus and Didymograptus. The Silurian system is represented by the Baton river beds to the west of the Aorere beds, occurring in the basin of the Motueka river, which flows into Tasman Bay. The Devonian system is well exposed in the Reef ton mining field. The Carboniferous system includes either the whole or a large part of the Maitai beds. The Maitai beds include a thick mass of slates and sandstones, which form the bulk of the Southern Alps, whence branches extend southeastward to the coast. The beds take their name from the Maitai river near Nelson; they are largely developed in the mountains of the Tararua-Ruahine-Raukumara chain, on the eastern side of the North Island; they occur in the Kaikoura Mountains, and an outlier forms Mount Torlesse, near the eastern edge of the Southern Alps, west of Christchurch. The Maitai beds have generally been considered to be Carboniferous from the presence of species of Productus found in the Permo-Carboniferous of New South Wales. But Professor Park has obtained Jurassic fossils in the Maitai series; so that it will probably be ultimately divided between the Carboniferous and Jurassic. The two systems should, however, be separable by an unconformity, unless the Maitai series also includes representatives of the Kaihiku series (the New Zealand Permian), and of the Wairoa series, which is Triassic.
New Zealand includes representatives of all the three Mesozoic systems. The Hokanui group comprises the Triassic Wairoa .and Otapira beds, and the Jurassic Mataura beds. The Wairoa series includes marine limestones characterized by Monotis salinaria, and the Otapira series is characterized by Spiriferina spatulata. The Mataura beds are largely of estuarine formation; they contain oil shales and gas springs.
The Cretaceous system includes the Waipara series, a belt of chalky limestones with some phosphate beds at Clarendon in eastern Otago. Their fossils include belemnites, ammonites, scaphites and marine saurians, such as Cimoliosaurus. These Cretaceous limestones are interbedded with glauconitic greensands, as at Moeraki Point in eastern Otago. The second type of Cretaceous is a terrestrial formation, and is important as it contains the rich coal seams of Greymouth, Westport and Seddonville, which yield a high quality of steam coal. Cretaceous coals have long been worked in the North Island, north of Auckland, on the shores of the Bay of Islands, where the age of the coal is shown by its occurrence under the Whangarei or Waimio limestone.
The Cainozoic system is represented by Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene and Pleistocene beds. The best-known Oligocene rocks. are the limestones of Oamaru and the brown-coal measures of Waikato. The Oamaru limestones have been largely used for building stones; they are a pure white limestone, largely made up of foraminifera, bryozoa and shell fragments, and contain the teeth of sharks (e.g. Carcharodon ) and of toothed whales such as Squalodon serratus. In southern Otago the Oligocene beds are brown coals and lignites with oil shales, which, at Orepuki, contain 47% of oil and gas, with 8% of water. The Miocene Pareora beds occur to the height of 3000 or 4000 ft. above sea-level, in both the North and South Islands. Some of its fossils also occur in the Oamaru series, but the two series are unconformable. In Westland the Miocene includes the Moutere gravels, which rest on the summit of Mount Greenland, 4900 ft. above sea-level.
Marine beds of the Pliocene are best developed in the Wanganui basin. They consist of fine clays with nodular calcareous concretions rich in fossils. The Pleistocene system in the South Island includes glacial deposits, which prove a great extension of the New Zealand glaciers, especially along the western coast. The glaciers must have reached the sea at Cascade Point in southern Westland. On the eastern side of the Alps the glaciers appear to have been confined to the mountain valleys. The Pleistocene swamp deposits are rich in the bones of the moa and other gigantic extinct birds, which lived on until they were exterminated by the Maori. The Cainozoic volcanic history of New Zealand begins in the Oligocene, when the high volcanic domes of Dunedin and Banks Peninsula were built up. The Dunedin lavas including tephrites and kenytes correspond to the dacite eruptions in the volcanic history of Victoria. The building up of these domes of lavas of intermediate chemical type was followed by the eruption of sheets of andesites and rhyolites in the Thames English Miles so Ioo 200 Cretaceous
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Goldfield and the Taupo volcanic district. The volcanic activity of the Taupo district lasted into the Pleistocene, and the last eruptions contributed many of its chief geographical features.' (J. W. G.) Climate. - Diversity of level and latitude cause man y varieties of climate in the South Island provinces. The height and regularity of the mountain backbone increase the diversity. Only one pass, the Haast (1716 ft.), crosses from E. to W. at a less height than 3000 ft. Along the whole west coast the climate resembles nothing in the British Islands so much as Cork and Kerry, for there are the same wet gales from a western ocean, the same clouds gathering on the dripping sides of wild mountains, an equal absence of severe frosts and hot sunshine, and a rich and evergreen vegetation. Elsewhere, sheltered Nelson has a more genial air than the Wellington side of Cook Strait. Foveaux Strait is as cold and windy as the Strait of Dover. The Canterbury plain has but 26 ins. of annual rainfall, less than a fourth of that along the western littoral. Very seldom indeed is moisture excessive in the eastern half; there is even a deficiency in unfavourable years, and dry, warm winds do damage to crops. Insect life is relatively not abundant; the air is brisk and bright with ample sunshine. The snow-line, which is at 3000 ft. on the eastern flank of the Alps, is 3700 ft. on the western.
The healthiness of the New Zealand climate in all parts is attested by the death-rate, which, varying (1896-1906) from 9 to 10.50 per 1000, is the lightest in the world. In 1896 it was as low as 9. Io. In 1907, however, it was 10.91, the highest figure since the year 1883. Even in the boroughs the average is below 13. The rainfall in most of the settled districts ranges from 30 to 50 ins. a year. Meteorological statistics are collected at Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin and eight other stations; and observations of rainfall, temperature, and wind-directions are received from eighteen stations of the second class. From the data thus obtained an isobaric map and a report are prepared for each day; and weather warnings are telegraphed to any part of the coast when necessary. A system of inter-colonial weather exchanges has been agreed upon, and telegrams are daily exchanged between Sydney and Wellington.
Flora
There are about one thousand species of flowering plants, of which about three-fourths are endemic. Most of those not peculiar to the country are Australian; others are South American, European, Antarctic; and some have Polynesian affinities. Ferns and other cryptogamic plants are in great variety and abundance. The New Zealand flora, like the fauna, has been cited in support of the theory of the remote continental period. In appearance the more conspicuous flora differs very greatly from that of Australia, Polynesia, and temperate South America, and helps to give to the scenery a character of its own.
The early colonists found quite half the surface of the archipelago covered with dense, evergreen forest, a luxuriant growth of pines and beeches, tangled and intertwined with palms, ferns of all sizes, wild vines and other parasites, and a rank, bushy, mossed undergrowth. Though much of the timber is of commercial value - notably the kauri, totara, puriri, rimu, matai and kahikatea - this has not saved the forests from wholesale, often reckless, destruction. Two-fifths perhaps have already disappeared, and it is probable that in fifty years the only large tracts still standing will be sub-alpine woods and in state reserves. Meanwhile charred and rotting stumps give a melancholy and untidy air to valleys and denuded hillsides, for hard-wood stumps - and most New Zealand trees are hard-woodtake more than a generation to decay utterly. Compelled by the windy climate the colonists are doing something to repair these ravages by planting European, Californian and Australian sheltertrees; but it is only in the naturally open and grassy regions of the east and south-east that settlement as yet improves the landscape. There, before the colonists came, wide sweeps of dull green bracken or wiry yellow-green tussocks seemed bleak and monotonous enough. The swamps covered with flax and giant bulrushes were often redeemed to the eye by sheets of golden-plumed toe-toe, a kind of pampas grass.
Fauna
The destruction of the forest is telling fatally on the ' See the geological map of New Zealand by Sir James Hector (1884). A brief sketch of its geological history is given by Hutton, Trans. New Zealand Inst. (1899), xxxii. pp. 159-183. Fullest information about the geology of New Zealand is given in the Reports of Geological Explorations issued by the Geological Survey of New Zealand, and the Annual Reports of the mines department. A bibliography of the chief literature has been compiled by A. Hamilton, Trans. New Zealand Inst. (1903), xxxv. 489-546.
native avifauna. In their natural state the islands were without land mammals, and the Polynesian immigrants brought but two in their canoes - a dog, now extinct, and a black rat, now rarely seen. Until recent years the forest birds did much to atone for this deficiency, for among them the tui and makomako rank high as songsters, while the apteryxes, kakapo, weka and stitch-bird are of peculiar interest to science. The importation of stoats and weasels, ferrets and cats has resulted in a process of extermination which has already made it necessary to set aside the islets Resolution, Kapiti and Little Barrier as sanctuaries. The place of the vanishing native species is being taken by such European arrivals as sky-larks, finches, blackbirds, sparrows and rooks. Outside the forest country the weka, an almost wingless bird, is numerous, and in the Alps a hawk-like green parrot, the kea, has learned to kill sheep and holds its ground. The pukeko, a handsome rail, abounds in swamps. The native wild ducks are carefully preserved for sportsmen, in whose interests pheasants, red and fallow deer, and brown and rainbow trout have been very successfully acclimatized. Acclimatization, indeed, had played a chief part in the settlement of New Zealand. Coming to a country without useful animals, cereals, rich grasses or fruit trees, the colonists had to bring all these necessaries with them. So far acclimatizers note but few failures; the chief case is that of the salmon. Again and again salmon have been successfully hatched out into rivers, but the young fish hastening down stream to the sea never return thence. This is all the more unfortunate as eels were the only large edible creatures found in the fresh-water lakes and rivers. Tidal waters furnish minute whitebait, and the mud-flats of salt or brackish lagoons and estuaries flounders - both very delicate eating. Oysters, both mud and rock, are good and plentiful. A strange visitor, the frost-fish, never seen at sea, is picked up stranded on sandy beaches in cold weather, and is prized by epicures. The snapper is at once the handsomest and most palatable of a good variety of sea fish. Sharks are found everywhere and are common round the north, though they rarely attack man. The albatross is of course the most conspicuous sea bird. Penguins are found, confined to the islets of the far south. As some compensation for its paucity of useful animals and food plants, New Zealand was, of course, free from wild carnivora, has no snakes, and only one poisonous insect, the katipo, a timid little spider found on certain sea-beaches. Of poisonous plants only the berries of the tutu and the karaka are worth notice. The wild dogs and pigs which now sometimes prey on the sheep-farmers' lambs in outlying districts are the descendants of domestic animals which have escaped into the "bush." Among imported pests the rabbit and sparrow, and a numerous company of European and American thistles and other weeds, have to be systematically contended with. The formidable increase of the rabbit has been arrested, mainly by poison and wire-netting fences.
Population
In January 1840 there may have been 2000 whites in New Zealand. By 1861 the number was still slightly under 10o,000. During the next twenty years the gold discoveries, the public works expenditure, and the development of agriculture; multiplied the number of colonists five times to 498,000 in April 1881. Then increase slackened for many years, and was slowest between 1886 and 1891, when the addition was but 48,000 in five years. In 1901 the whites numbered 773, 000; and between that year and the census computation in April 1906 the increase, 115,859, was the largest yet recorded in any quinquennium. In the middle of 1908 the official estimate of white inhabitants was 950,000.
The white population, about nine to the square mile, is very unevenly distributed. In the South Island nine-tenths of the colonists live within 40 m. of the east and south-east coasts; in the North Island the eastern and northern parts of Wellington province, and the southern and broadest part of Auckland province are still very scantily peopled. For all that, Auckland and Wellington are the most populous of the -larger districts, while Nelson, Westland and Marlborough have for a long time shown the slowest increase.
Males still exceed females in the proportion of nine to eight. About 70% of the population is New Zealand born. The white foreign element is small; what there is is chiefly Scandinavian, German and Dalmatian. Among the foreigners males greatly outnumber females; even in the case of the German settlers the proportion is two to one.
Between 1880 and 1892 the birth-rate fell by no less than 12.95 points - rather more than 1 a year. It continued to fall for seven years more, though at a much reduced rate, and finally reached 25.12 in the year 1899. In the next eight years there was a slow recovery to 27.30 in 1907. Thanks, however, to the low death-rate, elsewhere referred to, the margin of increase in New Zealand is over 17. To that, and to the annual gain by immigration, the fairly rapid rate of increase is due. Between 1885 and 1891 the colony lost more than it gained oversea; but from 1892 to 1908 the gain by immigration was 90,000. Probably, at least half of these represent Australians, impelled to emigrate by years of drought. England and Scotland supply the bulk of the remainder. The government has aided immigrant farmers and farm labourers having a certain sum of money, also female domestics, by paying part of their passage money.
The people of colour in 1906 numbered 53,000, including 2300 Chinese and 6500 Maori half-castes. An apparent increase of 7000 in the Maori and half-castes between 1891 and 1906 is, perhaps, partly due to more accurate computation. It seems probable that the number of Maori and half-castes taken together is about the same as it was thirty years ago, though the infusion of white blood is larger. The Public Health Department has exerted itself to improve the sanitation of native villages and combat the mischievous trickery of Maori wizards and "doctors." Wealth. - The increase of wealth went on after 1879 in spite of dull times, and was only checked by the especially severe financial depression of 1893 and 1894, caused by low prices and the Australian bank panic. The estimated private wealth of colonists fell from £236 per head in 1890 to £219 in 1895. It was computed in 1905 to have reached £292. After deducting debts owing abroad the public and private wealth of the colony is calculated to be about £270,000,000.
Of the five banks of issue doing business in the dominion three are Australian and New Zealand institutions. Their deposits exceeded £ 21,000,000 in 5907, as against £12,250,000 in 1890. At the same date more than £ 10,000,000 stood to the credit of small depositors in post office and private savings banks, nine-tenths in the former. The gross amount insured by policies in life insurance offices (ordinary and industrial) was over £29,000,000, of which the state office claimed two-fifths.
Trade
The growth of sea-trade in recent years is shown by the larger size of the ocean-going vessels trading with the colony. The number of these only advanced from 589 to 629 between 1896 and 1906. But the increase of tonnage in the eleven years was from 614,000 tons to 1,243,000; while the crews rose from 20,000 to 32,500. The coasting trade and trade with Australia are carried in New Zealand-owned vessels.
External trade has risen from £13,111,000 in 1887 to £37,371,000 in 1907. Before 1886 exports exceeded imports; but in the twenty subsequent years there was an invariable excess of exports, valued in all at £52,000,000.
The re-export trade is stationary and extremely small. Trade with the United States grew from £877,000 in 1891 to £2,140,000 in 5907. Thanks to the tariff of the United States the balance of trade with North America is heavily against New Zealand. The same disparity is shown in her trade with Germany, which is, however, much smaller - less than half a million. Trade with India and Ceylon reached £557,000 in 1906; that with Fiji and other Pacific islands was £622,000 in 1900. With these exceptions New Zealand trade is almost all done with Australia (£5,348,000 in 1907) and the United Kingdom; the latter's share in 1906 was £26,811,000 of the whole.
Production
Wool (£4,250,000 to £7,657,000 according to prices) remains at the head of the list of exports. The quantity grown increased by 70% in the twenty years 1887-1906. Moreover the export of sheep skins and pelts was valued at £680,000 in the lastmentioned year. But the description changes; there is much less merino, and more of the coarser and longer cross-bred. The number of sheep has increased from 56,564,000 in 1886 to 22,000,000 in 5908, though the increase has been almost all in North Island. The number of the flocks grows, and the average size diminishes even more rapidly. There were 9149 flocks in 1886; in 1906 the number had risen to 18,500 - average size of each flock about 1050. The smaller size of the flocks and the breeding of sheep for meat rather than for wool, the cultivation of English grasses and of extensive crops of turnips and other roots on which to fatten sheep and lambs, all tend to change sheep-farming from the mere grazing of huge mobs on wide, unimproved runs held by pastoral licences. The "squatter's" still occupy eleven million acres, but even these are more closely subdivided than in former days. „How much more extensive is grazing - of the more scientific order - than agriculture, is seen at once from the figures of the amount of land broken up, for crops or other purposes, and the amount under sown grasses. There were about 1,600,000 acres under crop in 1899. This is exclusive of the vast area of native-grass land. The area now occupied and utilized by whites is about 38,000,000 acres.
The character of the soil and the moist cool climate enable English grasses to be sown almost everywhere, and 13,000,000 acres are now laid down with these. The result is seen in the price obtained for New Zealand sheep in Smithfield Market, which is from Id. to id.
| Year. | lb. | Year. | lb. | 1882 1891 | 1,707,328 /10,199,082 | 1901 1907 | 208,045,000 263,738,496 per lb higher than that given for frozen mutton from other countries. The figures below show the growth of the trade: Export of Frozen Meat. In the market for frozen lambs the colony remains at present without a rival. Frozen beef is also sent to England. In 1907 the export of frozen meat was valued at £3,420,000. The export of butter and cheese has risen in value from £207,687 in 1890, till in 1907 that of butter amounted to £1,615,000. In London, New Zealand cheese fetches as high a price as Canadian; the value of the cheese exported was £662,000 in 1907. Though not yet quite equal in importance to wool or frozen meat, dairy-farming is almost entirely carried on by small farmers and their families, who supply milk to factories. Most of these are co-operative, their shareholders being the farmers themselves. The profits of the industry are thus widely distributed among the producers. The development of dairyfarming has led to the spread of settlement, especially in the west of North Island, where large tracts of fertile soil formerly covered with forest have now been cleared and converted into dairy-farms. Of 1,850,000 cattle in the colony, two-sevenths are dairy cows. The importance of hemp as an export - increasing from £26,000 in 1898 to £832,000 in 1907 - has led to improvements in cleaning and grading it. In consequence its price in London nearly approaches that paid for manila. MiningThe export of gold, which was £1,220,000 in 1880, did not exceed that figure until 1898, and, indeed, fell below threequarters of a million in 1887. Then gold-mining, after being long at a standstill, began again to make headway. For many years the surface alluvial mining in South Island became less and less profitable. As in other countries, however, the working of quartz reefs gradually compensated for this. The cyanide process of gold extraction, and the returns obtained by its means from the great Waihi mine in the Upper Thames, caused an outbreak of gold fever, which led to the opening up of a few good and a great many worthless quartz-mines in the Auckland fields. In South Island the river-beds of Otago province have been successfully worked by means of dredges, and good returns secured. In 1907 the gold exported was valued at £2,027,000.4. The total value of the gold exported from New Zealand from the discovery of the metal in 1857 to 1907 was, roundly, £70,000,000. Kauri gum still holds its place as an export, over £500,000 worth being dug up annually. The number of Istrians and Dalmatians who came from the Adriatic to dig for kauri gum led to the passing of restrictive laws. The progressive output of coal from 1880 to 1900 is shown below. Excluding Coal for Fuel by Ocean Steamers. Excellent as the quality of the best New Zealand coal is, the cost of mining and shipping it prevents the growth of any considerable export trade. Silver is chiefly extracted in the Thames district, but other mines containing silver ores have been found. There are many other valuable ores - copper, iron, lead, zinc, antimony, chrome and manganese. Petroleum springs have been tapped near New Plymouth. Building stones of various kinds and of excellent quality abound. Marble and cement stones occur in many places. There are extensive deposits of iron-sand on the west coast of the North Island, and of iron ore at Parapara in Nelson.
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