PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 593 



3.- HOW CAN TROPICAL AND SUB-TROPICAL AUSTRALIA 

 BE EFFECTIVELY DEVELOPED? 



By MATTHEW MAC FIE. 



It is no exaggeration to say that in the marvellous variety of soil 

 and climate with which this island continent is endowed — throughout 

 an area of 2,946.691 square miles — we possess sources of potential 

 wealth unparalleled in any equal extent of territory on the surface of 

 the globe. But the important geographical fact seems to be very 

 imperfectly realised by the majority of our population, and immigrants 

 from Europe, that we occupy 12^ degrees of latitude within the tropics. 



The distinguished meteorologist, Professor Alleyne-Ireland, of the 

 Chicago University, in his great work " The Far Eastern Tropics," 

 says — " If we draw across a map of the world the northern and southern 

 isotherm of 68° Fahrenheit, that is to say, a line passing through those 

 places in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres which have a mean 

 temperature of 68° Fahr., we cut o£E a belt of the earth's surface 3,600 

 miles across, roughly lying between 30° north latitude and 30° south 

 latitude. This belt is called, for the sake of convenience, ' the heat 

 belt.' It is clear that the climate of a country determines to a great 

 extent the labor conditions which prevail there." (Pages 3-6.) 



We accept extreme cold as a bar to civilisation, and refuse to 

 accord a similar influence to extreme heat. Any limits we care to set 

 to the development of Terra del Fuego on account of its climate will 

 be received without remark, but if we attempt to assign bounds to the 

 progress of Borneo and Sumatra, through which the equator passes, 

 hostile voices are raised in protest. Yet open-air labor is as really 

 incompatible with the enjoyment of sound health and with the attain- 

 ment of old age by white people who continuously reside within the 

 tropics and sub-tropics, as would be the case under similar conditions 

 in the frigid zone. How often, in like manner, do we find indiscrimi- 

 nate and false comparisons made between Canada and Australia as 

 fields for white immigrants, as if no account need be taken of the wide 

 climatic difference between the Dominion and the Commonwealth. 

 Nevertheless the stern truth remains that Canada, from north to south, 

 is wholly a white man's country, being, for the most part, 48° from the 

 equator, and 18° from the limit of the heat-belt — which is 30° from 

 the equator — while Northern Australia extends to within 11° of the 

 equator, and covers 19° of the heat-belt. 



The marvel that the wide differences in climate and race which 

 prevail throughout the British Empire should escape the attention 

 of intelligent Englishmen is enhanced when we remember that out of 

 413,000,000 subjects of His Majesty King Edward, only 52,000,000, 

 or only one in eight, are white — seven out of eight being colored. Out 

 of 16,000,000 square miles of British territory, comprising over a 

 fourth of the globe, only about a fourth of this total British area lies 

 outside the tropics. Lady Lugard, in her great work on Nigeria, 

 p2 



