Surplus gold from Egypt is not capable of undercutting Council Bills so seriously as surplus gold from Australia; for in this case it is Egypt which lies between. If we assume, for the sake of precise illustration,[57] that the cost of sending gold from Egypt to London is nearly the same as that of sending it from Egypt to India, an Egyptian bank, about to ship sovereigns in any case, will take any price in excess of 1s. 4d.[58] paid in London for the delivery in India of the value in gold of a rupee. This is the extreme case. If Council Bills are at a higher rate than 1s. 4d., say at 1s. 4–1/16d., the Alexandrian exchanges may be at a level which makes it profitable to ship gold from Egypt to India for payment in London, when it is not profitable to ship gold from Egypt to London. If we still make the above illustrative (but not exactly accurate) assumption, when Council Bills are at about 1s. 4–1/16d. and the Alexandrian exchange on London below par, Egyptian gold competes with Councils as a means of remittance to India. Of course the supply of remittance from this source is usually somewhat limited; when some Egyptian gold has flowed away to India under the influence of the above conditions, this is likely to have the effect of strengthening the Alexandrian exchange, and therefore, by modifying the conditions, of making the continuance of a flow less likely. The Egyptian gold is of great practical importance, because the busy season in Egypt comes rather earlier than the busy season in India, so that in the winter months the gold which has served the purpose of moving the crops in Egypt can be sent on to be changed into rupees which are to serve the same purpose in India. Of the gold, therefore, which flows from London to Egypt every autumn, very little finds its way back again to London; what is not kept by the cultivators in Egypt travels on in due course to India. The precise moment at which this movement takes place and its extent depend, as we have seen above, on the rate at which Council Bills are being sold in London, and also upon whether the Egyptian cotton crop is dealt with late or early. But when towards the end of their busy season the Egyptian banks find themselves with more gold than they need, Council Bills must be sold at a relatively low rate if the flow of this gold to India is to be prevented. The dealings between the Egyptian and the Indian banks must thus present very delicate problems of arbitrage. It is probably within the power of the Secretary of State, if he wishes, to regulate the flow of gold direct from London to Bombay by means of the sales of Council Bills. But when gold is available in Australia or Egypt, the matter is not susceptible of such easy control.