ELSE IN WOOL.

Patea Mail, Volume V, Issue 502, 24 March 1880, Page 3

ELSE IN WOOL.

,Thtc gradual rise in the price of wool in the English market cannot fail to have a' most beneficial effect upon the trade ami industry of the Australian Colonies. Ever since the scries, which closed on the I2lli instant, opened, the telegrams have disclosed a most satisfactory slate of things. Each day almost the same language has been used. 80 many bales had been sold; the biddings were animated; and the advance which was established on the opening sales fully the prices realised at the the next series, which open in April, will be equally encouraging. If these prices continue .the gain to this colony will be very material indeed. We hare not the returns’of our exports for 1879 before us, but fiom those of 1878 wo find that in that year there were sent to England from Eew Zealand about 60,000,0001bs weight, valued at £8,000,000. The sum was probably an over-estimate, bat the figures enable us to form some idea of what the increase—equal to per cent. —wo have just noted means. Wool is the largest export of the colony, and a rise in its value must .tell beneficially on all classes. The occupation of the growing of wool is not by any means confined to the squatter, as some erroneously imagine. On May 31st there were 5980 owners of sheep in the colony. Of ' these no less than 4049 possessed under 500; G93 held under 1000 ; 436 owned less than 2000; 324 possessed under 5000; 200 held less than 10,000 ; 199 owned under 20,000; 113 possessed less tliau 50,000; there were 19 who owned under 100,000; while there was only one who possessed more than 100,000 and under 200,000 sheep, and he belonged to Otago. There were at that time 11,405,389 sheep in the colony altogether, of which number no less than 7,443,889 were depastured on freehold and only 3,961,500 on Crown land. In the Canterbury provincial district there were 3,371,90 4 sheep, of which 2,015,017 were maintained on freehold and the balance on Crown hind. These figures show how generally diffused the industry of wool growing is in this colony end how intimately connected at is with the general weliaro ol the community.—“ Press”