"It will be observed from the returns published monthly in the New Zealand Mines Record" says that journal under date of May 1899, "that gold-dredging is one of the colony's most stable industries. It has gone on steadily increasing for many years past; and engineers, owners, and masters of dredges have been quietly perfecting their appliances to such an extent that it is generally acknowledged that in no other part of the world is this branch of mining so economically and scientifically carried on as it is in New Zealand. This has all been accomplished without booming, and shareholders have received substantial profits. There is danger just now of a solid industry being made a catspaw of by some of the company promoters, whose chief aim is the flotation of scrip, and those who are asked to go in for new enterprises should make full inquiry as to the probabilities of obtaining something like an adequate return on the capital they are asked to invest." "The consequences of booming," the editor goes on to remark, "are … fatal to those who get in too late." But how much temptation there is locally to boom may be, perhaps, vaguely gathered by the uninitiated from the annexed fragments, culled from the up-country press, which are informative enough in their way:—
"A report has been published in several papers that the Ranfurly dredge (Electric Company) last week obtained 1008 ounces. We are authoritatively informed that, although the dredge in question is getting very good returns, nothing has yet been obtained nearly as large as that quoted above. We are informed (on the best authority) that the record weekly yield for the Electric dredges stands at 647 ounces, which yield was obtained by the Electric No. 1 dredge nearly two years ago. This constitutes, we also imagine, the record for the river—in New Zealand, for that matter. It is ad-
