400 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



are vested in School Commissioners, who control them in each 

 provincial district for the Government, and who pay all 

 revenues from such lands either into the Consolidated Fund 

 or into such fund as may be authorised for the maintenance of 

 the primary schools. 



The secondary - education reserves are controlled in the 

 same way, but, curiously, the income derived from the lease 

 of them is paid over to the high - school authorities in the 

 several education districts, though there appears to be no legal 

 authority for the adoption of this course. The governors of 

 high schools have separate and special endowments of their 

 own, which were allotted when these schools were constituted. 

 The lands controlled by the secondary-school Commissioners 

 amounted to acres, whilst the governors of high 



schools either have or had 152,234 acres of town and country 

 lands, from which large revenues are drawn for the main- 

 tenance and support of middle-class education. 



The fourth class of reserves is for the benefit of what 

 are known as the university colleges. These are four in num- 

 ber, Christchurch, Dunedin, Wellington, and Auckland each 

 having one. The college at Wellington has only been con- 

 stituted a short time, and it does not appear that any lands 

 have yet been set aside as an endowment for it. The reserves 

 of the Canterbury College and the Otago Univerity College 

 amount to 314,000 acres, or about 500 square miles of coun- 

 try ; in other words, an area representing one two-hundredth 

 of the whole of New Zealand is set apart and administered by 

 independent authorities for the benefit of two colleges. The 

 estimated value of these endowments ten years ago was 

 £245,000, and the annual rent-roll was £13,306. The Auck- 

 land University College has an endowment of more than 

 30,000 acres of the public land, but I have been unable to dis- 

 cover from returns either estimated value or what income is 

 being derived from the lease of them. Suffice it to sav that 

 an annual grant of £4,000 is made to the College by the Go- 

 vernment towards maintenance in addition to what may be 

 derived from the lease of the endowments. Finally, there are 

 the special endowments for the benefit of the New Zealand 

 University.* These lands amount to something like 46,000 

 acres, and their value ten years ago was set down at £32,535. 

 At that time only a portion of the land was leased, which 

 brought in an annual income of £775. 



What the rent-roll from all the secondary and higher 

 endowments was I have no means of knowing, but that they 



* The New Zealand University was deprived of all land endowments 

 by the Act of 1874, and has never enjoyed any revenue therefrom, as it 

 all passed to credit of local bodies. — Ed. 



