gigantic experiment, on which Mr Mort has already sunk nearly £100,000. Everything about it is on new principles, and it is now _all but_ in working order. It has been the labour of years, and is now just about to see daylight. You perceive my writing is shaky. I am in the train, returning to Sydney, whirling past orange orchards, and endless dull bush, all of gum-trees. But everywhere there is an undergrowth of lovely bush flowers; and here and there, from the crevices of the rock, there hangs a veil of creamy blossom,— I think they are rock-lilies; and there are some scarlet lilies, like crowns of fire; and strange blossoms of the _waratau_, which I cannot describe, because it is so utterly unlike anything you ever saw,—something between a scarlet dahlia and an artichoke. But the glory of the bush is the feathery mimosa, which takes the place of our broom, and is covered with sheets of fragrant gold. There is also a lovely creeper (here they would say _vine_), with masses of lilac blossom—the Kennedia—which climbs the mimosas, and droops in richest trails of bright purply red. You can best realise the effect by picturing a bough of lilac wistaria overhanging a golden laburnum. Even the dull gum-trees, the eucalypti, become beautiful when covered with delicate yellowish blossoms. The sheep-farmers glory in the dreary tracts of land, the monotony of which is not varied by one gay flower. Happily the bush revels in colour, and I find upwards of fifteen totally different sorts of epacris—crimson, white, pink, and yellow. I call them heaths, but I am rebuked for so doing. Some are so fragrant that they scent the air like honey. But when I revel in wild flowers every one says, Oh, wait till you see the bush a month hence! It will be one carpet of many colours.