AUXILIARY DISTRIBUTION. 385 



tricts; and when Brooke tells us that while rice would be 

 selling among the Dyaks at one place at 4^ cents & pasu, 

 half a day further down the river it would be eagerly 

 bought at 25 cents apasuf we are shown how defective dis 

 tribution is accompanied by abundance in one place and 

 scarcity in another, and how such differences stimulate dis 

 tribution. We are reminded, too, that these changes are fur 

 thered by increase of population, which at once augments 

 the aggregate of desires for needful commodities, and makes 

 the process of distribution a more profitable business. Once 

 more, when transference of goods from place to place be 

 comes active, improvement in the channels of communica 

 tion is suggested to the more speculative by the prospect of 

 profit. Even in the more advanced African communities 

 this cause has operated. Burton writes of Dahome : 



1 The turnpike is universal throughout these lands. A rope is 

 stretched by the collector across the road, and is not let down till all 

 have paid their cowries.&quot; 



Like causes worked here. The investment of money in 

 making good roads with a view to payments from travellers, 

 long ago transformed our channels for transit. Of course 

 the reader s thought running in advance will recognize such 

 causes and consequences as strikingly operative in our days. 

 The need for easier distribution where quantities were great, 

 as of cotton between Liverpool and Manchester, prompted 

 the system of transmission by railway ; and the system hav 

 ing been initiated there and elsewhere, went on to increase 

 the quantities of things to be transmitted. Nor let us omit 

 to note that along with the formation of good roads, of good 

 vehicles, and then of good railways, another change has 

 taken place. Originally the distributor was his own carrier; 

 but with the growth of traffic carrying became a separate 

 business. 



Of course distribution has been increasingly aided by easy 

 transmission of intelligence. In the days when only kings 

 and nobles could employ messengers, merchants had to do 



