TEN YEARS' PROGRESS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1681, 18 May 1904, Page 56

TEN YEARS' PROGRESS.

SOME INTERESTING FIGURES. An interesting leaflet has oeen is c y-d from the Registrar-General’s office, giving particulars of the advance made by the colony dui'ing the ten years between 1893 and 1903 in regard to 1 population, agricultural and pastoral affairs, exports and imports, etc. The population of the colony in 1893, excluding Maoris and residents of Cook and other Pacific islands, was 672,265. Ten years later it had risen to 832,505. Coincident with this increase of population came a desire to go on the land, the actual increase in the number of occupied holdings for tlie period nnder notice being 20,802, and the actual increase in the land under cultivation 3,410,853 acres, until in 1903 13,504,004 acres were sown in grasses. Horses at the end of last year were more numerous by 87,674. and cattle by 708,242 than they were in 1893. Sheep, in consequence of the increase in the shipments of frozen mutton and lamb, decreased by 425,816. In this direction it is instructive to note the advance made in the export of wool. In 1893 the shipments were valued at 0-63,774,738; last year the figures were £4,041,274. Progress was very marked in other directions. For instance, the value of butter ■shipped away from the colony in 1903, compared with 1893, increased by <£1,068,422, frozen meat by ,£2,111,877, cheese by .£95,372, phormium fibre by <£376,309, gold by <£1,121,911 and provisions, tallow, timber, etc., by <£1,174,797. Slummed up, it is found that the total exports in 1893 were valued at .£8,557,443, and in 1903 at <£14,838,192 a not increase of <£6,280,749. Imports were greater by <£5,877,160 in 1903 than they were ten years previously. The figures dealing with financial mattei*s indicate a rapid advancement. The amount of money on deposit in the banks of the colony increased from <£14,433.777, to ,£19,011,114 in the period under review, and the amount on deposit in the P.O. savings bank and private institutions from <£3,966,849 to £8,432,958. The best evidence of the progress of the Government Life Insurance Department is the fact that the numbers of policies have increased by 11,407, and the sum assured by £2,289,552 in the last ten years.