Recent Works in Australia and New Zealand. 7 



Kipling voices a popular fallacy when he attributes this 

 marvellous growth of town population to the effect of droughts. 



On the contrary the awful and devastating droughts to which 

 the interior of Australia is so liable has the effect of driving the 

 population from the rich pastoral industry of the interior to the 

 agricultural industry of the well-watered coast districts. And the 

 agriculturalist and agricultural laborer feed the small rural village 

 rather than the large town. 



Illustrations were given showing the various types of employ- 

 ment in the towns and country, and the contrast between New 

 Zealand, where the population is mainly agricultural, and there are 

 no really large cities, with Australia was shown by illustrations of 

 the beautiful cities of New Zealand. 



The Municipal enterprises of both places were then elaborated. 

 The wonderful water supply provisions, which have entailed 

 reserves of land measured by the hundreds of square miles in the 

 best forest ranges of the country, were detailed, and views shown 

 of some of the reservoirs. 



Among other the vast new cataract reservoir on the Nepean 

 River from Sydney was shown — a reservoir with a masonry dam 

 of 200 feet high, and containing a water storage of more than one 

 hundred times the capacity of all the storage reservoirs of Belfast. 



These figures, however, give but little idea of the civilization 

 and advancement of the cities. The contrast, coming from such 

 a town as Melbourne, where almost all the streets are paved with 

 hard wood or tarred macadam, or similar clean roadway, and 

 where the water supply and sewerage works have cost over 8 

 millions pounds, to our city, where the traffic still jolts over 

 granite sets and cobble stones, and where the harbour still casts 

 up the effluvia of the city, and the obsolete ashpit still makes the 

 back lanes abominable, is simply revolting. 



At the same time it would give an entirely false impression if 

 this contrast were taken as meaning that life in the colonies was 

 an easy one, with every modern facility to luxury, with a cheap 

 and frequent tramway service, and with pleasure boats and ferries 

 always crowded. 



