Notwithstanding what I have said, I would not have you ground any theory upon my remarks as yet--or deceive Sir James Clark, and the rest of the medical gentlemen, who are looking on all sides of the world for a climate for their hopeless invalids. I have stated facts, but those which follow are no less authentic. On the 30th and 31st of December last, the thermometer at the observatory stood in the shade at 70 deg. and 72 deg. noon. On the 1st of January at noon, and up to three o'clock, P.M., it stood in the shade at 92 deg. and 93 deg. On the 2d it rose to 95 deg. at noon, and fell at sunset, eight P.M., to 69 deg. In the middle of the foresaid month of December the thermometer was 86 deg. at breakfast time, and before dinner down to 63 deg. These memoranda, gained from undoubted sources, would show the climate--in summer at least--to be more variable than my reference proves it; yet I am told that even in summer time you hear of little sickness amongst grown up people. New comers suffer from dysentery, and children are attacked in the same way. I have had two visitations, from which I rallied in the course of four and twenty hours, with the aid of arrow root, port wine, and laudanum. A free use of vegetables is always dangerous to strangers, and they are obtained here in perfection. The weather is too hot for apples, pears, and gooseberries in the summer. Grapes and other English hot-house fruits come to delicious maturity in the open air. The melons are inconceivably exquisite, and grow, as they were wont in Paradise before the fall, without care or trouble spent upon them. The seed is put into the earth; a little water is given to it at that time, and the thing is done--"_c'est un fait accompli_." Potatoes grow at any season of the year, and cauliflowers and turnips spring up almost in a night like mushrooms. There are some five farms in cultivation around Melbourne, and the crops of wheat are very fair in quality but fall off in quantity. Thirty bushels per acre is considered a good crop. Oats grow too much to straw, and are generally cut in the slot blade, winnowed, and carted to Melbourne and sold for hay. Rye-grass hay does not answer, and clover is not more successful; but vetches have just been introduced on a small scale, and nothing yet grown has succeeded so well as green food for horses and cows. Hay of fine quality is brought from Van Diemen's Land, but it is very dear. A cart load of good oaten hay sells here for about forty-five shillings. Van Diemen's Land hay is at present eleven guineas per ton.