and Crochet Cottons.

Corks, Bungs, and Net Floats

Cork Mats and other manufactures of cork Instruments, Scientific and Apparatus, for use in universities, colleges, schools, or public hospitals.

Surgical and Dental, and Appliances... Models of Inventions, &c., and Models and Casts for teaching purposes for universities, colleges or schools.

Nets, Fishing, and Netting therefor

Photographic Dry Plates, Sensitized Films, and
Paper.

Pipes (smoking), Cigar and Cigarette Holders,
and Cases, &c.

Specimens of Natural History

Theatrical Costumes and Properties

Yarns, other, including Coir..

Total, Division XVI

FREE GOODS NOT SPECIALLY MENTIONED IN THE

2,880

7,021

4,601

5,897

6,245

7,021 12,142

260

423 4,545

683

4,545

Of the total import of £37,811,471 there were retained for home consumption goods to the value of £35,220,242, the balance, £2,591,229, being re-exported. The re-export trade of Australia in manufactured goods is transacted chiefly with New Zealand and the South Seas; the raw material re-exported is mainly the produce of the same countries collected in the chief Australian seaports for shipment to Europe; £1,241,082 represents gold from New Zealand and New Guinea, sent to the mints of Sydney and Melbourne, and when coined despatched to various parts of the world.

A comparison of the volume of trade during each year, from 1891 onwards, is afforded by the following table :

If the omissions from the Customs returns referred to on page 228 had not been made, the excess of exports in 1903 would probably have been some £2,500,000 more than shown in the foregoing table, and would thus have amounted to nearly £13,000,000.

An excess of exports is now the normal condition of Australian trade, due to the circumstance that the interest and return on British and foreign investments in the Commonwealth largely exceed the return of Australian investments abroad. The question of the annual payments made to external creditors is discussed at some length in another part of this volume, and it is there shown that the payments on account of state and municipal borrowings, and the earnings of private capital in Australia, reached, in 1903, £15,558,000, and this sum, or thereabouts, should represent the excess of exports over imports, if there were no import or export of capital. Hardly a year passes, however, that one or other of the state governments does not raise a loan in London, and capital is constantly being invested in Australia by private persons. It, therefore, rarely happens that the full difference represented by the payments made to the British and foreign creditor is shown in the trade returns.