D.—2

62

1,980,000. At this day it is probably not below 2,750,000, but the increase is almost exclusively in the urban and lowland districts, and tourists are not the sole cause. English free trade has invited the excellent silk, woollen, and cotton goods of the confederacy to a good market, and factories as well as domestic manufacturers, are common iv the low land valleys. With this we have, however, little concern, and turn to the uplands. The great industries of the Alps are the rearing of cattle, and the dairy, and they are admirably carried on. A poor beaat is not to be seen within the confederacy, winter or summer; and the cheese, butter, and milk are abundant and excellent. With eight months of close season, when frost and snow prevail, the system of the farm is necessarily different from that of our lowlands. The cows are stallfed during the whole winter, and are consequently domesticated to a state of extreme gentleness. The hay-crop is of cardinal importance. Unless in very unfavourable years, two crops are a minimum. The meadows, which occupy chiefly the bottoms and easier slopes of the valleys, are densely grassed. The winter's manure is stored and applied as soon as the snows are melted, and again after each crop. This is done with immense care and industry ; men and women are even seen carrying liquid manure on their backs in long buckets up hills steeper than those round Wellington and Nelsou, to be distributed 400 or 500 feet above the valley. The usual way is to draw the manure out into the fields in elongated barrels on wheels (the cows doing a share of the haulage). From these it is ladled out over the ground with deep wooden shovels. The hay is not left long on the ground. In some districts, if the weather is uncertain, the grass is only dried for twenty-four hours, in a sort of loose haycocks kept open by frames of sticks iv the form of crosses over which the grass is laid and hangs down. It is stored not in stacks but in sheds and lofts over the cowhouses. By this method, the hay lying lightly, fermentation is easily stopped at the proper point. The result is a very fragrant and nourishing hay. Occasionally between the hay-crops, or at the end of summer, the cows are let into the meadows; but, as soon as the snow has been long enough off the upland pastures—the real Alps—to allow the grass to come well forward, they are driven up and remain till the snow drives them down again. During their stay iv the high pastures the dairy-business (including the pigs) is attended to on the spot in huts arranged for summer-dwellings as well as dairies. .Domestic manufactures fill up the spare time in winter. Wheat up to 3,000 feet (Herschel, Phys. Geog., § 339), oats, buckwheat, flax and hemp, potatoes, and garden vegetables are cultivated in the valleys, and the apple, pear, cherry, and plum up to a considerable height. Beef and mutton are rare in Switzerland, even in large towns. Only the heifer calves are reared to maturity, and the surplus after maintaining the stock are killed for veal, the meat of the country and of a large part of Continental Europe. The people are sedate but cheerful. They seem as a rule well-to-do, though pauperism exists among them. The homestead-buildings are generally large. The alps or upland pastures are joint holdings, over which the proprietors iv the valleys adjoining~have definite pasturage rights. That these holdings and rights are only moderately extensive (as ideas run in New Zealand) is evident. A population of twenty-one souls per square mile (or 6-10 acres) of territory, including mountain-tops, snow-fields, glaciers, river-beds, shingle-slides —even if we allow each holding to imply ten persons —- gives much less to each holding than the minimum conceived of by Mr. Browning and Mr. Rochfort for the future freehold occupiers of the Clarence country; and these gentlemen were speaking of selected countr_y, from which rugged mountain-tops would be excluded, and of a region where the summer is twice the length of the winter; whereas the proportions are inverted in Switzerland. Nevertheless, on this moderate area of rugged country the people not only live, but thrive, increase, and enjoy life. The Swiss are, very sociable and travel much within their own limits as well as abroad, liailway trains are not empty in winter. The gatherings of musical, rifle-shooting, and other societies from all parts are large and frequent. The Swiss are musicians, although the lakes are now almost silent, the volkslied and jodel having retired before the throng of visitors, as nightingales retreat from the extension of a populous town. Music on the lakes and mountain-sides survives in the Tyrol, where railways are less omnipresent. Like all mountaineers, the Swiss are lovers of their country and home, and of old when they left it it was to return in later life. It is said that emigration is now going on to the United States on a serious scale. It is worth consideration by the Legislature and Government whether a small part of the stream could not be advantageously diverted to these shores. The people are not only hardy, laborious, experienced in mountain-farming, dairy-work, and the management of cattle, they are also accustomed to co-operation ; and the inoculation of a district like the Clarence with such men and women would probably be a great success, if home-sickness (the German word heimweh suggests the thought of mountaineers away from their own country) did not interfere. It would be instructive to follow the subject here opened into detailed accounts of some of the most notable special districts and populations of the country, and to extend the examination to other lands where mountain-regions under far harsher climates than Switzerland are occupied by prosperous populations. One of the diagrams placed in the hands of the Commission suggests the extraordinary case of Utah, the modern colony of the Mormons, on the shores of the Great Salt Lake, which is 4,200 feet above the sea. The signal success of that example of colonization of a land supposed, not ■"unreasonably, to be a howling wilderness, is a reproof to the croaking temper which hastily condemns a country exceptionally blessed in soil and climate, merely because the adjacent country is even more highly blessed. But it might be overloading the cumulative proof of our case to press the matter further here. Heights of Stviss Towns and Villages. Aarau, 1,207 feet; Aigle, 1,374 feet; Airolo, 3,867 feet; Andermatt, 4,736 feet; Appenzell, 2,562 feet; Basle, 813 feet; Bern, 5,883 feet; Chateau d'Oex, 3,264 feet; Chaux de Fonds, 3,270 feet; Chur, 1,965 ; Davos. Piatz, 5,104 feet; Dissentis, 3,804 feet; Einsiedeln, 2,882 feet; Freiburg, 1,942 feet; St. Gallon, 2,106 feet; Trogen, 2,962 feet; Winterthur, 1,584 feet; Frauenfeld, 1,447 feet; Herisan, 2,549 feet; Geneva, 1,327 feet; Lausanne, 1,686 feet; Lauterbrunnen, 3,526 feet; Linththal, 4,642 feet; Luzern, 1,437 feet; Meiringen, 1,968 feet; St. Moritz, 6,088 feet; Neufchatel, 1,552 feet; Obergestelen, 4,448 feet; Saanen, 3,356 feet; Samaden, 5,599 feet; Sarnen, 1,630 feet; Sion, 1,710 feet; Thusis, 2,359 feet; Verneres, 3,061 feet; Zermatt, 5,314 feet; Zurich, 1,506 feet.