STATISTICS OF THE AUSTRALASIAN COLONIES.

Kumara Times, Issue 2821, 6 October 1885, Page 2

STATISTICS OF THE AUSTRALASIAN COLONIES.

Statistics do not often provide veryattractive reading matter, but from a collection of them there may he occasionally extracted some items possessing interest even for the general public. Such is the case with some of the information supplied by Mr Hay ter in his volume of Australasian Statistics for 1884. For instance, it cannot but be interesting to know what is the total population of these great and growing Southern colonies and what is the number contributed by each towards the aggregate. This information is confined in the following table : Population. Victoria ... ... 961,276 New South Wales ... 921,268 New Zealand ... ... 564,304 South Australia ... 312,781 Queensland ... ... 309,913 Tasmania ... ... 130,541 Western Australia ... 35,958 Total 3,233,041 The total inctease of population daring the year was 141,948, the excess of births over deaths having been 63,812 and of immigration over emigration 78,126. In the matter of births and deaths this colony shows well in comparison with the other colonies; in the birth rate per 1000 she stands third, while iu the death rate she fortunately occupies a very low position, being at the bottom of the list and far beneath any of the rest. The vital statistics are worth republishing, so favorably does New Zealand show up in this respect. They are as follow ; Per thousand of population. Births. Deaths,. South Australia... 38.38 15.52 New South Wales 37.92 15.88 New Zealand ... 35.91 10.39 Tasmania ... 35.66 15.50 Queensland ... 35.75 22.97 Western Australia 33.84 21.87 Victoria ... ... 30.49 14.27 We now come to another heading under which we very much wish that we could state that New Zealand occupies as low a position as in the death rate, but, unfortunately, she in this respect occupies the post of honour, if honor it be, to be in.advance of all the sister colonies. , W® refer to the public indebtedness w'hich, of all Australasia, was on the 31sb December last £120,850,558, apportioned as follows :

New Zealand ... 32,860,882 Victoria ... ... 27,526,667 New South Wales... 24,601,959 Queensland ... 16,417,850 South Australia ... 15,473,800 Tasmania ... ... 3,202,300 Western Australia... 795,000 Mr Hayter explains in a footnote that New Zealand had an accrued sinking fund of £2,983,403 to set against her debt, which is thus reduced to £29,877,579, but even allowing for this it will be seen that she occupies the premier position as a borrowing colony. Of course, being so far ahead of the others in the aggregate of her indebtedness she is also to the front in the amount per head of population being : New Zealand, £SB 4s Id ; Queensland, £52 19s 6d ; South Australia, £49 9s 7d ; Victoria, £2B 12s 9d ; New South Wales, £26 14s; Tasmania, £24 10s 6d ; Western Australi" £23 4s Id.— Nelson Mail.