Residents in the Northern Territory speak hopefully about the climate. That the white man cannot perform the same amount of constant work in tropical Australia that he can in his own climes and countries is admitted, but still, it is contended, he can work and be healthy and happy. There is an absence amongst the population of the enervation so conspicuous in India, Java, Singapore, and Ceylon. Artisans ply their callings on the eight hours system, as elsewhere in Australia, without special precautions against the sun. The climate is, in fact, more Australian than it is tropical. But at Port Darwin itself there is much to remind the traveller that he is in the tropics, and is nearer to the equator than to Capricorn. Mingled with the characteristic flora of Australia are the palms, bamboos, rattan canes, and wild nutmeg-trees, and other flora of the adjacent Spice Islands. The ground, the vegetation, and the atmosphere are alive with insect life. Linnaeus has eleven orders of insects, but, as one settler facetiously remarks, had the eminent naturalist in question visited the Northern Territory, he might have classified one hundred and eleven orders. Fire-flies flit about; beetles display their metallic brilliancy; radiant moths and butterflies fleck the gloom. The observant man admires and marvels; but not always does the view charm, for myriads of mosquitoes and sand-flies have at him, and the bung-fly, attacking the eyelid, will cause a swelling that will close up the eye for several days. Ants are found literally in legions. In the houses some amusement is to be derived from watching the ant-eating lizard, who is allowed to run up and down the walls without molestation, and is, indeed, welcomed as a highly useful domestic animal. In the bush surprise is excited by the enormous ant-hills. Some are twenty-five feet in height, and six or eight feet in diameter; but usually they are from six to twelve feet high, and about four feet in diameter; and along a belt of country extending perhaps one hundred miles, they may stand apart but fifty or a hundred feet. To level these cunningly devised cellular structures, occasionally, would prove far more costly than levelling the ground of timber. In other places the 'meridional' ant-hill is met with. These edifices are from three to six feet high, and more. They are broad at the base, and taper to a point at the summit. The form therefore is that of a long wedge, and the peculiarity is that all the summit lines are true north and south, as though laid down by a surveyor.