SOME CURIOUS STATISTICS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3585, 8 January 1883, Page 4

SOME CURIOUS STATISTICS.

Iv a recent issue of that worthy and striotlypropermagazinc, the Family Herald, avc disc-over the folloAving quite startling statistics in regard to our adopted country : —"Ncav Zealand.—Ncav Zealand c.OA-ers an area of 105,342 square miles. It has a population of 3,000,000. In thirty years its trade rose from a value of £6,000,000 to £03.000,000. In IS7I it avhs £03,000,000 : in 1880 it had risen to £91,000,000. _ The average of trade for every inhabitant is £12 higher than in Great Britian, five times higher than in Europe as a aa'liolc, aud five and a half times higher than in the United States. The irold extracted in thirty years amounted to £292,000,000. In 1870 the wool crop Avas 192,000,0001bs ; in 1579 it Avas 392,000,0001b5. Iv 18S0 the shipping entered and cleared was 8,500,000 tons. The colony has 1,250,000 horses, 8,250 cattle, and 75,000,000 sheep." Noav this is rather a stairgerer, isn't it'r NeA-er mind the square'miles, but think of a population of <• nearly three millions," and a trade of "sixty-three millions'" AYe have tried every' arithmetical device that Aye could recollect to find out lioav such magnificent, such ii_r"eous blunders could haA'C been made, or on Avhat principle they proceed. But in A-ain, AYe fancied that a cypher or two might have been stuck on at the end of each set of figures, or that decimal points might have been ignored, but no clue could thus be detected. For to quote just a -feAv of the correct numbers from official statistics, the European population of Ncav Zealand at last census (1881) was 489,933, and on tho 30th June last was estimated at 507,788, the Alaoris adding only 44,000 to this'total. The import and export trade for 18S1 avctc only £7,157,015 and £G,OGO,3GG respectively, so avc find a difficulty in perceiving lioav the £91,000,000 for the previous year was made up. Our gold export up to this year has been £38,851,805, not £292,000,000, as the Family's veracious statistician asserts. Instead of a million and a quarter of horses, AA _ c possess 1 GO, 302, little more than a tenth of that number. Of sheep Aye have .12,909,740, and not seA'enty-five millions. But strangely enough our valuable authority takes altogether a new departure when becomes to cattle. AYe haA'e 695,753, hut probably the idea of such a number of horses terrified him, and so he hastily reduced them to 8,250, or little more than a hundredth part of the truth. So these eccentric statistics are not even consistent in their AA-ild exaggeration, but are Avildly erratic in both directions. It Avould be really interesting to knoAv hou: the figures avc have quoted Avero made up. Certainly they might all have been set down at haphazard so far as any approximation to correctness goes, but in that case they hardly could all have been so very far astray. They certainly -will give the readers of the Family Herald, who fonu a very numerous circle, a surprising idea of New Zealand's magnitude and progress. If all ihe Family Herald's statistics are equally trustworthy, some remarkable notions must have been acquired by those Avho accept them as reliable gospel.—Post.