this: “White cow, writing capital A off-shoulder?” A paragraph relates the burning of “£10,000 worth of country near Gambier,” and advertisements of Colt‘s revolvers and quack medicines complete the sheet. The paper shows that for the most part the colonists here, as in New Zealand, have had the wisdom to adopt the poetic native names of places, and even to use them for towns, streets, and ships. Of the Panama liners, the _Rahaia_ and _Maitoura_ bear the names of rivers, the _Rechiné_ and the _Kaikoura_, names of mountain ranges; and the colonial boats have for the most part familiar Maori or Australian names; for instance, _Rangitoto_, “hill of hills,” and _Rangitiri_, “great and good.” The New Zealand colonists are better off than the Australian in this respect: Wongawonga, Yarrayarra, and Wooloomooloo are not inviting; and some of the Australian villages have still stranger names. Nindooinbah is a station in southern Queensland; Yallack-a-yallack, Borongorong, Bunduramongee, Jabbarabbara, Thuroroolong, Yalla-y-poora, Yanac-a-Yanac, Wuid Kerruick, Woolongu-woong-wrinan, Woori Yalloak, and Borhoneyghurk, are stations in Victoria. The only leader in the _Herald_ is on the meat question, but there is in a letter an account of the Christmas festivities at Melbourne, which contains much merry-making at the expense of “unacclimatized new chums,” as fresh comers to the colonies are called. The writer speaks rapturously of the rush on Christmas-day from the hot, dry, dusty streets to the “golden fields of waving corn.” The “exposed nature of the Royal Park” prevented many excursionists from picnicking there, as they had intended; but we read on, and find that the exposure dreaded was not to cold, but to the terrible hot wind which swept from the plains of the northwest, and scorched up every blade of grass, every green thing, in the open spots. We hear of Christmas dinners eaten upon the grass at Richmond, in the sheltered shade of the gum-forest, but in the botanical gardens the “plants had been much affected by the trying heat.” However, “the weather on boxing-day was somewhat more favorable for open-air enjoyment,” as the thermometer was only 98° in the shade. Will ever New Zealand or Australian bard spring up to write of the pale primroses that in September commence to peep out from under the melting snows, and to make men look forward to the blazing heat and the long December days? Strangely enough, the only English poem which an Australian lad can read without laughing at the old country conceit that connects frosts with January, and hot weather with July, is Thomson‘s “Seasons,” for in its long descriptions of the changes in England from spring to summer, from autumn to winter, a month is only once named: “rosy-footed May” cannot be said to “steal blushing on” in Australia, where May answers to our November.