Danthonia pilosa is a species about which I have some hesitation in writing, as I am not sure of the type. The commoner form at Tutira is locally a bad grass, both on account of the dislike to it-except when fresh from a burn-of stock, and furthermore that in the wet Tutira climate fires can only be run over this grass every second, or third, or even fourth season. On the other hand, this form might be a valuable plant on hard clay soils in a dry district. This, the less-good form, has narrow involute leaves on erect culms. In the better variety the leaves are broader, flatter, very pilose, and of a noticeably deeper green colour, and the culms have at first a decumbent habit, the seed-stalks rising only from the first joint and some continuing to lie flat. This habit of the culms may arise, however, from the centre of the plant having been eaten out by sheep, for I have noticed in heavily stocked country Microlana stipoides and some other grasses to a lesser degree adopt the same device, as if for self-preservation, and with an apparently instinctive knowledge that culms lying flat on the ground would be more likely to reach maturity and perpetuate the species. These two forms of D. pilosa were unknown at Tutira in 1882, and the first clump ever seen by me in the district was on the old Tongaio-Tutira pack-track, at a spot several miles from my southern boundary. In 1885, however, I discovered it covering scores and even hundreds of acres twenty miles to the north-east; but it was not until the early nineties that it began to make its appearance on Tutira. Then, within a couple of seasons, it seemed to establish itself all over the run on spots specially adapted to its requirements, and since then each succeeding year sees the hard dry clay soils more and more overOn pumiceous soils it seems less happy, and so far it has not encroached on the turf of the high ranges to the west.

run.

Arundo conspicua adorns many parts of the run with its long nodding plumes.

Arundo fulvida grows thickly on several of the almost precipitous papa slopes that face towards the south.

In the eighties there was a patch of land on Tutira known as the "Burnt Bush "; this had been forest through which in an extra dry season a fire had run, probably about twenty years previously, and long before the run had been "taken up" or stocked. Fern had in the eighties not quite taken possession of every foot of this land, where still the great gaunt boles stood in thousands, and here the commonest of the surviving grasses was Poa anceps. There are several very slightly differing varieties on the run, and it is one of the native species that will probably compose eventually the turf of the poorer or higher lands.

Poa cæspitosa grows naturally though sparsely on my higher country towards the west, though it is not found on the main ridges of Maungahararu. On the Tutira hills it has been sown by chance, probably with rye or cocksfoot seed harvested in Canterbury, where the species is common. I remember in the early eighties but one single tussock, and after twenty-five years there are but two or three patches, the largest, perhaps, 60 ft. by 20 ft. Though so exceedingly slow to spread, it takes possession very surely, allowing no other grass to survive. The increase seems to be by root.

Poa Colensoi is a rare grass, on the highest country I possess, and I have not noticed it under 3,000 ft.

Poa imbecilla seems to be another high-country grass, and grows locally at about 3,000 ft., and in the edges of bush lands.

Agropyrum multiflorum and Agropyrum scabrum are common grasses on the dry edges of road-cuttings and steep banks. They also manage to find plant-food on the most barren pumiceous lands-flats so dry and poor that even in our rainy climate they dry up after a few days' drought. But it is not only on such barren spots that these species survive; in all good free soils, wherever the herbage gets rough for stock, and the plants consequently are allowed a chance, these species appear and seed freely, and in my native-grass garden, on good well-worked soil, long healthy bronze-green shoots appeared immediately from the transplanted sods, and I have mentioned the height of the seed-stalks. These species, therefore, like many other natives, would do well on good soils if not choked by rye, cocksfoot, &c.; as, however, it is practically impossible to prevent this on such soils, these natives are only worth cultivation on lands where the strong alien species will not thrive.

Asperella gracilis is the last of my native grasses, and I have only one plant of it on the run. It makes up the twentyfirst species, and with it my list ends.

Any interest attaching to these notes seems to me to lie in the fact that with the deterioration of the surface soils the hardier natives tend to resume possession, and that the balance of nature is again tending to right itself.

The exuberance of growth during the eighties was abnormal, and the alien grasses are no more going to permanently destroy and oust the native grasses than the British weeds are going to destroy the indigenous wild flowers, but one of which has vanished from Tutira during the past quarter-century.

The alien weeds, however, will form a future paper, and with these concluding remarks my notes on the grasses of Tutira must end.

ART. XLVI.-The Struggle for Foreign Trade.

By H. W. SEGAR, M.A.

[Read before the Auckland Institute, 21st October, 1907.]

PART I.

[This part is considerably condensed.]

THOUGH in the same community the operation of supply and demand brings it about that at any given time price is for most goods more or less proportional to real cost of production, it is necessary to distinguish carefully between the two, and neither should be taken as necessarily the measure of the other. The price of an article is its exchange value expressed in terms of money; the real cost of production is measured by the amount of labour and capital required in its production. In different communities prices are less intimately related to the real costs of production. As one person may produce certain goods only with much greater labour or effort than is required by another, so one nation's productions may cost it far more in labour and capital than is required for similar productions by some other nation. Yet any particular product may sell at about the same price all the world over. The distinction here indicated is of the greatest importance in considering the essential character of foreign trade.

The utility of foreign trade, like that of domestic trade, is generally acknowledged. No one claims that trade should cease at the national frontier. The advantage consists in the increase of utility arising from exchange. In the case of every nation there are goods which could only be produced within its borders at a real cost of production greatly in excess of what is required to produce the goods which are exchanged for them. Rather than insist on being self-sufficing, it is better for a nation to produce an excess of those goods in the production of which she has an advantage, and to exchange a portion for those in the production of which she is at a disadvantage.

It must not be thought, however, that when goods are imported they are necessarily produced with less expenditure of labour and capital in the country of their origin than that with which they could be produced in the importing country. A nation may obtain goods by exchange at a smaller cost even

than that at which she could herself produce them, although to the exporting nation they may have cost more. Though it may appear paradoxical, it is nevertheless true that it may be to a country's interest to import goods which she could herself actually produce with less cost than the exporting country, for she obtains them at still smaller cost by exchanging for them goods for the production of which she has a still greater advantage. The cost to her is not the amount of labour and capital actually spent in the foreign country on producing the goods, nor even what would be required for herself to produce the same goods, but the still smaller amount spent on producing the goods which are exchanged for them. The reason that one country gains by trading with others is not that other nations produce at less cost than itself, but lies in the differences in the characters of the capabilities of the various nations.

A nation may be very wealthy and still exchange little comparatively by way of foreign trade. The United States, e.g., is amongst the wealthiest nations in the world, whether its wealth be measured absolutely or relatively to population; but relatively to population its foreign trade is amongst the smallest, being only about £7 per head, while that of New Zealand is about £33. From what we have briefly considered above, it would appear that foreign trade will tend to be large if a nation has some great special advantages, or even special disadvantages, in the production of some goods, or in the supply of some services. A special advantage will lead the nation to export the goods produced with this special advantage and purchase others for the production of which she is not so well fitted; a special disadvantage will lead her to purchase the goods she can only herself produce at such disadvantage and pay for them by exporting those for the production of which she is better fitted. We may say that causes producing a great differentiation in national productive powers tend largely to promote foreign trade. Now, the most general and at the same time most considerable causes affecting the relative powers of production in various branches of industry are the relation of population to land and the magnitude of the community or of the national

estate.

The first of these is the relation of labour to land. If the population is small compared with the area of good land, even though there may be abundance of coal and water-power, the nation will have a great relative advantage, not in manufacture, but in the production of food and raw materials. Australasia, Canada, and Argentine export foodstuffs, minerals, and other raw materials, and import manufactured goods. Even the

United States, with its much greater relative population and stringent tariffs, though exceptional resources in the way of coal and iron has given it a great advantage in the production and manufacture of iron and steel, remains to this day predominantly a producer of food and raw materials. If the population of a country, on the other hand, is large compared with the area of good land, the nation is at a great disadvantage in the producing of food and many raw materials in sufficient quantity for the needs of its large population. Unless it is equally handicapped in other directions, it will take up other pursuits, and import food and raw materials in return for manufactured goods, or for services rendered such as England renders by and in connection with her great carrying trade. The great and numerous advantages for manufacture and commerce possessed by Britain brought it about that as population increased it was much easier for her than for her rivals to turn for the support of her growing population from the pursuit of more and more intensive culture of the land to manufactures and commercial pursuits. Consequently she started earlier on her great manufacturing and commercial career than other nations; but some of these are now at last, by reason of the continued growth of their populations, being forced in the same direction. If, however, there be in any country little source of power, or such can be obtained only at great cost, the nation may be forced by increasing population rather to a more intensive cultivation of the soil than to manufactures; and a very intensive system of cultivation may have to be reached, calling strongly into action the law of diminishing returns, and leading to a greatly diminished prosperity of the people, before the point is reached at which its labour and capital can be more economically utilised in the development of manufactures.

The

Smallness of population or of territory is the second of the two general causes we are considering which promotes great specialisation of national industry by a great differentiation in the national productive powers. The smaller the resources the more restricted generally will be the variety of occupations in which the population can engage with advantage, partly through diminished variety in the resources themselves, and partly by the smaller field for the division of labour. variety of resources of the United States we cannot expect and do not get in the much smaller area of, say, Holland. But a nation may not be exceptionally small in respect to its territory or resources, and yet may be unable, by reason of the smallness of its population, to engage with advantage largely in a variety of industries. A small community is not suited to a high development of the division of labour. Our own Do