IMMIGRATION. The discovery of gold has done more than any other factor to attract immigra tion from abroad and from one State to another. An illustration of this is the remarkable develop ment of Victoria in the decade following 1850, and of Western Australia from 1891 to 1901. During the early part of the Nineteenth Century the convicts brought from Great Britain consti tuted a considerable part of the population. The assistance rendered to immigrants by the State Governments has been of importance, the States having borne the expenses in whole or in part of over 600,000 immigrants. The conditions for acquiring land have been most favorable (see the paragraph on Agriculture in this article). Foreign immigration greatly decreased, however, during the last decade of the century. Queens land contains the largest percentage of foreign born, who constitute a third of the total popula tion of the Commonwealth. The large majority
of the foreign born come from the United King dom. Less than 4 per cent. of the population were born in lands not belonging to Great Brit ain. Of these, the Germans and Chinese are the most numerous, each exceeding 40,000. There are in the Commonwealth only about 9.000 persons horn in the United States. The Chinese are de creasing in numbers, the State laws now almost prohibiting their immigration; there are heavy fees exacted from landing immigrants, and ships are limited in the number they may bring—the number varying with the amount of the cargo. It has been found that the whites cannot so well endure the heat of Queensland in the cultivation of sugar cane as can the blacks, and this has led to the importation of Kanakas from the South Sea Islands.