All this district is intersected by 'wheat lines' of railway, over which in December, January, and February the crop is rushed to the seaboard. Great are the blocks that occur, and indignant is the grumbling because the whole yield cannot be carried at once. Horsham is hot with anger, and Shepparton refuses to be satisfied, and the lot of the Chairman of the Railway Commissioners is not at this period to be envied. The railways run also to the mountains of the east. One line will take the traveller to Beechworth, a charming town in the north-east; another line will convey him to Sale--and soon to Bairnsdale--right away in Gippsland. Beechworth should be visited because of the beauty of its surroundings. And if the visitor is a pedestrian, he can accomplish a grand and quite a fashionable walking tour through the Alps into Gippsland, striking the railway either at Bairnsdale or Sale. He is in the neighbourhood of romantic ravines, picturesque waterfalls, and grand fern scenery. Lyre-birds, bower birds and parrots will be his companions, and if he chooses to diverge a little from the route, he may break into virgin solitudes, and may measure giant gums unheard of before. [Illustration: A VICTORIAN FOREST.] One feature is common alike to all Victorian towns and the bush--the State school. In the towns the State school is a political structure. In the bush let there be twenty or thirty children in a three-mile radius, and there will be a wooden erection for the young people to attend. In some cases, where the children cannot be otherwise reached, the teacher will meet two or three families at intervals at certain houses. With a population of a million the State has 230,000 children on its school books. The instruction is 'free, compulsory, and secular,' and about this latter provision there is a great stir. It is not, however, advisable to stray into vexed issues here. Suffice it that there is no more general picture in Victoria, than that of the children trooping to and from their lessons, and that many a parent feels his existence brightened by the assurance that, come what may, 'schooling' is provided for.