Mr. Bryce on Wednesday gave an interesting lecture to the
Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce upon the value of our South African possessions, which he has recently been visiting. He evidently believes that the agricultural resources of the region, especially in the Transvaal, have been underrated owing to the preference of the Dutch for flocks and herds. South Africa will become one of the great meat-exporting countries, but broad districts of it are admirably adapted for tillage also,—a statement, we may remark, strongly confirmed by some letters recently before us. Mr. Bryce estimated the total value in the future of the gold industry at £700,000,000, a, calculation dependent upon the yield of the deeper reefs. It is, however, the one which has recently received the approval of mining experts, and has been circulated over the Continent, where it has raised the jealousy of British prosperity almost into a mania. The Germans in particular, who with their increasing numbers feel their poverty more than the French do, think it perfectly monstrous that wealth like this should fall to a nation which does not burden itself with a conscription
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