The climate is such as to make shade and protection from sun, wind, and dust almost a necessity. In winter, in July and August for instance, it is very pleasant. Even then it is often as hot in the sun as on an average fine day in England in summer; and a fire is out of the question, except in the evening or on a wet day. Snow has not fallen in Sydney, it is said, for twenty years. A sensation was produced the other day by a large snow-ball which a guard on the railway brought in his van from somewhere up the country where there had been a snow-storm. Towards the end of September it begins to be unpleasantly hot. The streets are for the most part left unwatered. Often a violent hot wind blows, filling the air with fine red dust, which penetrates through closed doors and windows, covering everything, and severely trying all mucous membranes, eyes, and tempers. This wind is known as a _Brickfielder_. It blows from the west, and generally lasts from one to two days. Then comes a southerly wind, often accompanied by rain and thunder, which strikes it at right angles, and prevails over it. The temperature at once falls. The sea breeze is disliked by many almost as much as the other, for though cool it is enervating. The temperature in summer at Sydney is not nearly so high as in the interior. Yet the Squatter from up the country when he comes there complains of the heat. Labourers declare that they cannot do a good day’s work there. With all classes hours of work are short and holidays frequent. Old people and persons with delicate and peculiar constitutions may have their lives prolonged; but strong men get ill who never were ill before, and complexions and faces look white, sallow, and shrunken almost like those of Anglo-Indians. Sydney is specially deserving of attention as being politically a fair average type of an Australian city. It is more like what most other Australian towns are likely to become than any other place. For the colony is nearly eighty years old. It has a history by no means uneventful or uninteresting. Among its early heroes it can point to many men of conspicuous ability, energy, and integrity. Most of the population are natives of the colony, real colonials, and not emigrants from the old country. They are less restless, less excitable, perhaps less energetic, than their neighbours at Melbourne. Some of them have hardly ever been ten miles from their native city.