a high protective tariff for the purpose of fostering industrial development. The result has been that certain industries have cropped up under this system, which are quite incapable of independent existence, and, while satisfying neither the employers nor their men, constitute a very heavy drain on the national purse. The chief objection, however, to the policy is that it invites a class of immigrant who is really not required in the country and who has taken to settling in the capital instead of scattering into the camp. The immigrant required is the "colonist," to whom the country is already beginning to owe much of its prosperity. There are two distinct types of colonist--the one who buys his land on a permanent colony, and builds a decent house, and the temporary tenant whose economic principle is to break the soil of new land, and moves to a new district at the end of his term. The latter owes his origin to the cultivation of "alfalfa," the wonderful clove-like plant that will grow on sand, and requires no rain, but thrives on the surface water which abounds in the country's flat, low-lying plains. Alfalfa will not grow in hard unbroken ground, and where the land is such, cereal cultivation is necessary for three years to reduce it to a fit condition. This work requires labour which is not available among the gauchos, the horsemen who act as hands on the estancias, and the estanciero himself probably does not possess the knowledge requisite for the cultivation of grain. A contract is therefore made with colonists, usually Piedmontese or Basques, to break the soil and grow cereals for three, or more usually five, years, either at a fixed rent or for a percentage of the crop, the stipulation being that with the last year's seed alfalfa is sown as well. When the last crop has been cut, the latter grows through the stubble. The growth of this plant is such that as alfalfa is more cultivated, the stock-bearing capacities of the country will easily be trebled.