Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1871.djvu/470

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NORWAY.

place to another, and who frequently attend different schools, devoting one day only in the week to each. They are paid by a small tax levied in each parish. Instruction in the primary schools is limited to reading, writing, arithmetic and singing, with sometimes the rudiments of grammar and geography. Almost every town supports a superior school ; and in thirteen of the principal towns is a ' herd skole,' or college, the instruction in which includes theology, Latin, Greek, Norwegian, German, French, English, mathematics, history, and geography. Christiania has a university, founded by the Danish Government, in 1811, which is modelled on the system of the German universities.

Norway is essentially an agricultural and pastoral country. At the census of 1855, the inhabitants of towns numbered 197,815, and at the census of 1865 they were 272,531, showing an increase of 14 per cent., against a general increase of the population of 12 per cent. Besides Christiania and Bergen, there were no towns above 20,000 inhabitants in 1865. Only about 100th part of the entire surface of Norway is under culture, or otherwise productive.

Trade and Industry.

The average value of the total imports into Norway, in the five years 1864-68, was 20,000,000, and of the exports 13,000,000 specie-daler. Of the imports 36 per cent, came from' Great Britain, 35 from Germany, 10 from Russia, six from France, and five per cent, from Denmark and from Sweden. About one-third of the total exports were shipped to Great Britain, one-sixth to Germany, and one-seventh to France.

The commercial intercourse between Norway and the United Kingdom is shown in the subjoined table, which gives the value of the exports from Norway to Great Britain and Ireland, and of the imports of British and Irish produce into Norway, in each of the five years 1865 to 1869 : —

Exports from Norway to

Imports of British Home

Years

Great Britain

Produce into Norway

£

£

1865

1,454,009

677,058

1866

1,611,359

854,348

1867

1,721,362

848.843

1868

1.823,067

774,950

1869

1,855,161

857,660

About three-fourths of the exports from Norway to the United Kingdom consist of wood and timber. In 1869 the exports of tim-