bounty and collection of excise should remain undisturbed 

 on the present basis under the acts expiring by effluxion of 

 time on 1st January, 1913; excise being payable at 1*1 per 

 ton on all manufactured sugar, and a bounty being payable 

 to growers of cane by white labour at the rate of £:} per 

 ton of sugar produced. But there are other consider! t ions 

 to be borne in mind in relation to the general question. 



Development of Civilization.— One of the most recent 

 deliverances on the subject of tropical regions is a paper by 

 Professor R. De C. Ward, 1 of Harvard. It contains the 

 following startling statement concerning Australia: "Most 

 of the latter continent (Australia) is a trade wind desert, 

 and therefore hopelessly arid." It is rather surprising to 

 find a statement of this character emanating from such a 

 source. Professor Ward says : — " Experience teaches t hat 

 white men cannot with impunity do hard manual labour 

 under a tropical sun, but they may enjoy fairly good health 

 as overseers, or at indoor work if they take reasonable 

 precautions." It follows, in his opinion, that in tropieal 

 regions it is impossible that successive generations could 

 goon reproducing white men and women without physical, 

 mental and moral degeneration. It has, however, been 

 pointed out that "prehistoric man in his earliest singes, 

 when most helpless, was an inhabitant of the tropics/' It 

 is also in the tropics that animal and plant life reach such 

 full development, and where nature does so much for 

 primitive man that he needs do but little. Mr. Ben j. Kidd 

 in his "Control of the Tropics," says, "slowly but surely 



