one hundred and ten million dollars annually, and its imports, of which about eight per cent are received from the United States, have a total value of from eighty-five to one hundred million dollars yearly. Its wool exports yield it forty million dollars; its frozen meats, twenty millions; butter, ten millions; cheese, six millions; gold, ten millions; flax, from two to four millions; grains, provisions, and timber, twenty millions.
The greatest of all the sources of New Zealand's industrial life is the sheep. Without sheep New Zealand could not so soon have reached the commercial position it holds to-day. Its most important export is wool, which yields about one third of the total value of all exports.
In nearly all parts of the country are pastoral runs, and there are few places where I have not heard the bleating of sheep and the barking of shepherd dogs. I have startled ewe and lamb on lonely tussock plains, and have seen them feeding high on the slopes of grassy ranges. On rural roads sheep raised clouds of dust, and at many railway stations they struggled for standing room in crowded cars. In New Zealand's pastures to-day there are twenty-five million sheep,—nearly half as many as there are in the United States,—and every year between six and seven million bleat for the last time in its slaughter yards.
To shear the twenty-two thousand sheep flocks of New Zealand and handle the clip, thousands of men are employed for about six months each year. In the North
