304 -VZ-Jf SOUTH WALES. 



minino- industries. These tlie reader will find properly treated in 

 tLeir respective places in tliis volume. Our millions of sheep and 

 cattle themselves produce an enormous return to the colony. The 

 wool clip of 1892 was sold for over ten millions sterling, and had the 

 price kept up to what it was nine years before the return would have 

 been nearer fifteen millions. A difference of a half-penny or a 

 farthing- per lb. means a difference of thousands to the wool-grower 

 and to the colony, as the recent slight rise satisfactorily evidenced. The 

 developments of our frozen meat and dairy produce trade are still in 

 the future, but they indicate a field for the expansion of the pastoral 

 industry. The agricultural industry is mainly directed at present 

 towards the supplying- of our own wants, but the prospective field may 

 be judged of from the fact that out of 196,000,000 acres within the 

 colony's boundaries only 5,000,000 are set down as quite unfit for 

 cultivation. Irrigation and water conservation will lay these vast areas 

 under tribute as time goes on. In 1894 the dairy cattle alone were 

 worth two and a half millions to the colony, and the value of the returns 

 for the year reached nearly two millions. The mining industry has 

 already retitrned the colony upwards of one hundred millions sterling, 

 and in 1894 the return was a little under five millions. These facts are 

 mentioned here to show that the favourable conditions under which 

 the population of New South Wales lives are stable and progressive, 

 and not the result of accidental and passing circumstances. 



