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other branches of the public service which are intrusted to the care of the Geological Department have been maintained in a satisfactory state of efficiency. In the Laboratory 345 analyses have been performed, and for many of these, which were solely in the interest of private persons, moderate fees have recently, by my direction, been charged, with the view of making the department partly a self-sustaining one, and also preventing the time of the Analyist being occupied in fruitless work. In the Meteorological branch the previously-existing chief stations are maintained, with the exception of Dunedin, which had to be removed; but its re-esta-blishment on a more suitable site is now under consideration. The extreme value of the most correct returns of the rainfall in all the different districts of the colony have already been recognised, both in the interests of agricultural and pastoral pursuits, as well as for the better management of our great engineering enterprises connected with the formation of harbours and other public works. The number of rain-recording stations has therefore, at a very slight additional cost, been largely increased. The weather-reporting, both by means of intercolonial exchange and local forecast for the benefit of mariners on the coast, is carried out on an economical system that has been approved by the highest authorities skilled in this science. The distribution of correct mean-time throughout the colony, the verification of the standard weights and measures, and the superintendence of the patent library are all duties which have been satisfactorily performed by the staff of the Geological Department. In concluding my report on this occasion on the mining industry of New Zealand I may be excused for stating my opinion that this colony has a great future before it in connection with its mineral resources. Its healthy and invigorating climate, its numerous splendid rivers, creeks, and streams, running rapidly at all seasons of the year, which are capable of being converted into motive-power to drive machinery, and its rich arable and pasture lands all point to the colony as one of the most suitable for enterprise and the investment of capital in many directions where industries may be established to give constant and lucrative employment to hundreds of thousands of people. The more that I look calmly on the circumstances of the colony the more do I feel assured that there is no necessity for that continual wail of depression that has been sounding and echoing and re-echoing so long in our midst, that the day is not far distant when those who now seem to look upon mining with carelessness, distrust, and suspicion will readily indorse the views I have here, enunciated, and turn an earnest attention to our mineral lands as the source of sure and permanent wealth to New Zealand. I have endeavoured, in as concise a form as I deemed the importance of the subject would admit, to marshal many facts appertaining to the mining industry. I trust that, when the advantages already gained and to be gained by the colony by the development of our mineral resources, the opening-up of the country, and the larger settlement of population that concurrently goes on are considered, that the warm interest I have expressed on the subject in. the present report will be held to be justified. To His Excellency W. J. M. LARNACH. Sir Wm. E. Drummond Jervois, G.C.M.G., C.8., Governor.