salubrious and attractive. Its yacht club, rowing club and golf links bring many people for a day's outing from the greater city. It has fine school buildings, beautiful churches, handsome residences, an excellent system of public schools, banks and other adjuncts of a thriving suburban city. Population 28,867.
New South Wales, the oldest colony in Australia, formerly included Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand, but now its area is 310,367 square miles and its population, including 10,000 Chinese, blacks and half-caste natives, is 1,664,644. The Australian Alps, Blue Mountains and Liverpool Range are some of the mountains scattered over the country. The Murray, Lothian, Nepean, Clarence, Shoalhaven, Darling and Macquarie are some of the chief rivers. The colony was established in 1788 by a party of transported prisoners from England. Then land was given to free colonists, and transportation ceased in 1840. Thereon followed a great social advance, stimulated by the discovery of gold in 1851. The country is covered with trees, as the eucalyptus, palm, pine and cedar, and vegetation is very rich. Kangaroos infest this as well as other regions in Australia; there are many lizards and snakes and birds of beautiful plumage. Gold was first worked in 1851 near Bathhurst, and is now found in an area covering 70,000 square miles, to an annual value of nearly $25,000,000. Silver abounds in Barrier Range; copper, tin, bismuth, manganese, antimony, mercury, zinc, cobalt and alum are mined; and precious stones are found in the granite formations. Yet the greatest mineral wealth is found in the coalfields, extending over 24,000 square miles and yielding 8,173,508 tons in 1910. Sheep and cattle are extensively raised, there being over 50,000,000 sheep now in pasture. The export of wool is nearly 300,000,000 pounds a year. While 140,000,000 acres are devoted to pasturage, only 1,000,000 are given to farming. The agricultural output is very small. Other exports include (beside gold, coal and the great wool crop), hides, skins, oranges, citrons, cane-sugar, wine, brandy, leather, tallow and meat, preserved and frozen. The colony has the largest trade, on account of its harbors and resources, of any of the Australian colonies. In 1911 it had 3,761 miles of railroad open for traffic. Public schools maintained by the state are now established, entirely unconnected with the church. Higher education is represented by the University of Sydney, with a staff of 80 professors and lecturers and 948 students. The laws are administered by a governor appointed by the crown, an executive council, a legislative council and legislative assembly. Sydney is the chief town. Population, including suburbs, 621,100. See T. A. Coglan's Wealth and Progress of New South Wales.
New Stars, sometimes called temporary stars, are bodies which suddenly make their appearance in the heavens, rise rapidly to their full brightness, and soon begin to diminish until they can be seen only with a telescope or, perhaps, not at all. The earliest one of which we have any account is that of 1572, generally known as the Star of Tycho Brahe. But it is only since the invention of the spectroscope that this class of stars has come to be of especial interest. The new star in the constellation of Corona Borealis, discovered by Birmingham on May 12, 1866, was examined spectroscopically by Huggins and Miller. They found that it possessed both a dark line spectrum and a bright line spectrum, differing in this respect from nearly all the other stars. The next new star was that in the constellation of the Swan, known as Nova Cygni, discovered on Nov. 24, 1876, a red star of the third magnitude. Two years later it was fainter than the 11th magnitude. Nova Andromedæ was discovered in August, 1885; and Nova Orionis in December of the same year. But the star which Anderson at Edinburgh discovered on Jan. 24, 1892, far exceeded all previous new stars in interest, because the power of the spectroscope had been increased in many ways since the previous stars were observed. For a full account of this star, called Nova Aurigæ, the reader is referred to Scheiner’s Astronomical Spectroscopy, where its interesting spectrum is described in detail. The next and only other important new star was also discovered by Anderson, this time in the constellation of Perseus, Feb. 22, 1901. Many theories have been advanced to explain this curious phenomenon; but the one which at present seems most probable is that advanced by Seeliger: The new star is produced by some dark body rushing into a meteor swarm or a nebula, the impact of small particles being sufficient to bring the dark body to incandescence.
New Year’s Day is the first day of the year. It now is usually celebrated by feasting and the interchange of presents. Jews, Chinese, Egyptians and Mohammedans, while differing as to the time of celebration, celebrate the first day of the year in their respective calendars. In the Christian era Christmas day, Easter and the 1st of March have each in turn been celebrated, and it was not until late in the 16th century that the 1st of January was universally accepted. In Scotland, France and Italy New Year’s is of more importance than Christmas, but in other countries the latter has superseded the former as a day of rejoicing and of making gifts.
New York, a North-Atlantic state of the Union, of firstclass importance in a political, commercial and industrial aspect, entitling it to rank, as claimed, as The Empire State. It is the seaward gateway of the chief immigration and trade of the Old World into
