Auo. 18. 1882.] 



KNO\VLEDGE 



196 



sheep ! As to vegetable products, the soil of New- 

 Zealand is specially well suited to all fruits or vege- 

 tables raised in Great Britain, while the indigenous 

 grasses in the interior are of a fine quality for feeding 

 purposes, and sustain in excellent condition the millions 

 of sheep which constitute much of the real wealth of 

 these nature-favoured regions. The famous Canterbury 

 plains are well known for the excellent quality and high 

 yield per acre of the wheats there grown ; while all around 

 the tortuous coast-line, reckoned at full 3,000 miles, there 

 abounds fish of fine quality, fit for table, and in numbers 

 practically tmlimited. Thus we may particularise the 

 hapuka, a large, cod-like fish, king-fish, sole, dory, flounder, 

 and very many others, to say nothing of oysters and various 

 Crustacea. In fact, the harvest of the sea would un- 

 doubtedly make a conspicuous figure in the food resources of 

 these islands, were it not that the harvests of the land are 

 so extravagantly ample as to render fish of quite secondary 

 account — like the fine honey of the West Australians, it is 

 too common to be of much commercial account 



We have now rapidly sketched the food-raising capacity 

 of the Australasian colonies in a rough and superficial 

 manner, but sulficiently to demonstrate that there, indeed, 

 production is not only in the ascendant, but miist remain 

 so for many years to come, and, meanwhile, has for its 

 only check such mechanical difliculties as still prevent us 

 benefiting in our home food markets by the unlimited 

 superabundance of all the principal food-stuffs — to use an 

 expressive if uncouth phrase — that our antipodean friends 

 now find emphatically a burden on their hands. To em- 

 phasise the existing state of things let us now take the 

 aggregate estimate furnished by the best official sources of 

 production in the Austral world in relation to population 

 and territory. First, then, the total area of these bounteous 

 regions amounts to 3,103,903 square miles, with an aggre- 

 gate population of 1,499,258 males. The land under actual 

 cultivation was at the period in question 6,371,238 acres, and 

 the agricultural produce amounted to 36,346,9r)0 bushels of 

 wheat, 17,7^6,87.") bushels of oats, 3,."i06,191 of barley, and 

 6,33.5,239 of maize. In addition to all thi.s, there were 

 produced 424,1.5.5 tons of potatoes, nearly 1,000,000 tons 

 of hay, and 1,871,861 gallons of wine. As to the flocks 

 and herds belonging to this singularly favoured community, 

 just a million and a half strong, or, including females, 

 2,715,792 all told, we find the horses were 1,064,655; 

 cattle, 7,878,782; sheep, 65,915,765; pigs, 822,337; 

 making a grand total of 75,681,539. A further analysis of 

 these astounding returns brings out the remarkable and 

 suggestive fact, that while, taking the total population at 

 2,715,792, there were only -875 persons to the square mile, 

 the flocks and herds stood at 24 -38 ! The revenue raised 

 by these peculiarly favoured colonists for the year 1879 

 amounted to £15,927,488, and in 1880 had increased 

 to .£17,069,016, while the value of the imports 

 amounted to .£45,060,666, and that of the exports 

 to £48,866,168 ! In other words, the value of the 

 trade per liead of the inhabitants, infants included, was 

 then about .£35 per annum. It is melancholy to con- 

 trast such a state of things with that prevailing among 

 ourselves at home. Australasia probably gives an example 

 of universally diffused real wealth, not only unknown in 

 any other country of the world, but historically unparal- 

 leled. It must be remembered, too, that this extraordinary 

 development of production has come about naturally 

 without any special concerted ed'orts on tin; part of the 

 colonists to sliow to the world what could bo done in 

 regions where the mass of the people were really en- 

 franchised and the true lords of the soil. It is easy to 

 imagine how much even this enormous productiveness of 



the Austral colonies would be directly stimulated if 

 national systematic efforts were made here to organise 

 proper markets for the reception of their surplus food- 

 products, and if special lines of steamers were established 

 to bring regular supplies. At present, there are many 

 serious difliculties of detail in the way of this consumma- 

 tion, but let us trust that the time is not distant when the 

 British householder, aided by the practical popularisation 

 of mechanical and chemical science, may find his best 

 security against high food rates in the fact that his beef 

 and mutton are fed at the Antipodes, and that some of his 

 best bread and his choicest fniits are the products of South 

 Australian fields and Tasmanian or New Zealand orchards. 

 (To be Continued.) 



WHAT WILL BE THE FORM OF THE 

 TRICYCLE ? 



By John Browning, 



Treasurer of the London Tricycle Club. 



THE number of tricycles known by different names has 

 now reached over 300. These may be divided into 

 two great classes : frontrsteerers and rear-steerers — or 

 those machines which have the steering-wheel in front of 

 the rider and those in which it is behind. It is but little 

 known that Starley first brought out the Salvo as a hind- 

 wheel steerer. After a few months he changed the con- 

 struction to a front-steerer. 



Soon after this, in the next season, the popular Meteor 

 form came into vogue. This was extensively copied under 

 various titles ; but during last season and the present 

 most of the makers who were making only hind-steering 

 machines have produced new patterns of good front- 

 steerers, while, as far as my knowledge extends, the 

 makers who were making front-steering machines have 

 confined their attention strictly to that type of tricycle. 

 This leads us evidently to infer that machines having 

 hind steering-wheels will become an extinct type in the 

 immediate future. 



Against this inference stands the fact that the fastest 

 machine we have, the " Humber," is a rearsteerer, and 

 that all the novel machines which have been introduced 

 this season — the " Monarch," the " Arab," the " Rucker," 

 and the " Sterling " — are of this construction. 



Now, the " Monarch " ma} claim to be the tricycle re- 

 duced to its simplest possible form, having no more bear- 

 ings than a bicycle. It is a true double-driver, both 

 driving-wheels doing equal work. It can be made exceed- 

 ingly light, and it is an admirable hill-climber, possibly the 

 best known. 



The " Rucker " is the first rearsteerer produced with 

 the pedals in the right place, tliat is, under the rider, and 

 behind the centres of the driving-wheels. It is a true 

 double driver, and it has the best steering-gear of any 

 machine made. 



The Stirling, as well as its great novelt}- of driving the 

 pedals backwards to urge the machine forward, by which 

 friction is avoided and power in leverage from the dirce- 

 tion in working is gained, has the seat suspended by straps 

 from a frame, which is attached to the machine by strong 

 helical springs. The same frame also carries the handles. 

 With this machine, bad macadam — that terror of the tri- 

 cyclist— may be ridden over and scarcely felt. 



M'ith machines, then, of the hind-wheel steering type, 

 possessing such important advantages, it may well be afiked 

 — why are front-steerera gaining ground almost exclu- 

 sively 1 There is a tolerably general belief that tricycles 



