STATISTICAL EEVIEW — >'EW SOUTH WALES. 113 



its attaining any commercial value, for I can find no notice of it in 

 the Decennial Tables of Exports, and in the Customs returns for 

 1871, only a few samples, amounting to 1,679 gallons in all, were 

 exported, to which bo specific value is attached. That the time 

 however, will come when the Mother Country will as readily avail 

 herself of our "Wines as she is anxious to take our meat, no one 

 will, I think, be prepared to dispute. But I must pass on to 

 the next subject, only stopping to make the remark that it is 

 impossible to reduce the produce of our husbandry, as we can 

 our wool and gold, to any arithmetical nicety of calculation as to 

 value. It may make no gi'eat show in the list of our exports, but 

 it gives occupation and support to nearly 50,000 of our people ; 

 and, although I have given Agriculture the second place in this 

 paper, I would not be so rash as to place the husbandman in the 

 second rank amongst the wealth-makers of the Colony. Heavy 

 losses and sore discouragements are his lot. Alternations of 

 drought, of frost, of rust, and blight, of grub and caterpillar, are 

 amongst the difficulties he has to contend with, and in a degree 

 that is felt by no other producing class amongst us. 



Gold. 



The statistics of our gold mines for the ten years ending 31st 

 December, 1871, exhibit for the first nine years of the series a 

 gradual diminution in production. Commencing with a value of 

 £2,212,531 in 1862, the production declined, till it reached in 

 1870 the lowest point recorded since the first discovery of gold 

 in 1851, namely : — £763,655. In the year 1871, however, there 

 are indications of a recovery, which, during the present year have 

 more than realized the most sanguine expectations of the 

 mining population. The production last year mounted again to 

 £1,143,781, making up the total value produced in the decennary 

 to £11,591,742— the first five years averaging £1,411,786, the 

 second five years averaging only £906,561. The industry during 

 the first five years gave employment to about 20,000 of our 

 people, and during the second five years to about 15,000 on the 

 average. The value of the gold produced in the Colony and 

 exported from 1851 to 1861, inclusive, was £13,596,686. To 

 what proportions the energy and the enterprise that are now 

 being directed to the development of this branch of industry 

 may cause the production to attain, is a question beyond the 

 power of human foresight to conjecture. I must leave it to 

 others to discuss this problem, and pass on to the consideration 

 of a branch of industry more certain in its results, viz. : — 



Coal. 



We are here without a rival, and may calculate with certainty 

 on a production, limited only by the demand, for ages to come. 



