Grazing.

About 1,680,000 acres of the Marlborough Land District are at present devoted to keeping sheep. The leaseholds in the northern parts of the district contain a large extent of scrub-and fern-covered country, now producing little or no food for sheep, but capable of improvement. The total number of sheep depastured is 827 597, distributed as follows amongst the counties into which the land district is divided: Marlborough County, 518,845; Sounds County, 119,567; Kaikoura County, 189,185. On the natural pasture of the open country merino sheep are kept almost exclusively, the land carrying from half to one sheep per acre. In the forest country, on sown grass, the land keeps from two to four crossbred sheep per acre. Along the shores of the Sounds large areas of hill-land have been taken up on lease, and are now being cleared and laid down in grass expressly for keeping sheep, but generally throughout the forest country the holdings are small or of moderate size, hence this is, after the Wairau Plain, the most populous portion of the district. The export of wool during last year amounted to about 13,000 bales.