It may appear singular that there should be so large a number of departures as 4483 to set against 12,469 arrivals. We have already remarked, however, that the gold-diggers are migratory in their habits. Many of them, who have amassed a few thousand pounds, return to their own countries to settle. The state of society in Australia is not such at present as to attach parties to the colony. There is unfortunately there a want of home comforts. The wealth in the colony, suddenly acquired, is in the hands of people unprepared, by education or early pursuits, for spending it in a sensible manner, or investing it profitably. Many are coming thence only for a season, as visitors to their native land, or to return with relatives and friends; and some are going away in quest of gold, reported to exist, in more than Australian abundance, elsewhere. For example, there has been recently a rumour of the Peruvian mines reassuming their original fertility; and we observe, in recent Australian papers, announcements of numerous ships about to sail with passengers for Callao, on the west coast of South America, in the neighbourhood of which port it is said that gold has been recently discovered in large quantities. The real gold, however, will most assuredly be Peruvian guano, with which such ships will load for this country and the United States. Such re-emigration is natural amongst a population like that of Australia, and will continue for a while. But the arrivals in the colony are becoming more and more composed of the class likely to be settlers. The Germans have been lately extensive purchasers of land, and are _habitués_ in the colony. A report of a Hamburg society gives the following as the German population in 1852:— New South Wales, 13,500 South Australia, 8,000 Victoria, 1,320 ____________ 24,820 The German emigration to Australia last year will have greatly swelled these numbers; and the description of emigrants from that country may be estimated from the fact that, of nearly 6000 persons who applied to the Berlin Emigration Society in 1852 for advice and assistance, 4444 possessed property amounting in the whole to 977,635 dollars, or, upon an average, 218 dollars (£32, 14s.) per head.[12] We have also yet to experience the effect which will be produced by remittances home by emigrants for the purpose of enabling their friends to join them in the colony. The impetus given to the efflux of population from Ireland by such remittances was strikingly shown by the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners in their Report of last year. The remittances from the United States, as ascertained through leading mercantile and banking firms, were as follows in the years mentioned:—