is nothing to prevent his stock from feeding all over the Squatter’s run. I was told that in some districts it has been found impossible to carry on cattle stations, and they have been abandoned or turned into sheep stations, owing to the Selectors. It was notorious that the latter, having in general little skill in agriculture, and being far from any market, could exist only by eating or selling the Squatters’ cattle. Indeed this was pretty well proved by their often disappearing altogether from the neighbourhood when the keeping of cattle was given up. With sheep it is not quite so bad. They are under the shepherd’s eye, and are sooner missed. And according to the bush code of morality, in some districts cattle are almost _feræ naturæ_, and taking them is not stealing in the same degree as taking a pocket handkerchief or even a sheep is. A large proportion of the small settlers and Free Selectors in New South Wales are Irish. The English and Scotch in the Australian colonies amalgamate easily. They have no national or religious antipathies to overcome, and frequently even attend each other’s churches. The Irish remain apart. They generally are glad to get a government situation of any kind, and are said to make very good officials, and they contribute the great majority of domestic servants. One does not hear of many of them being in trade. The greater number seem to go up the country, as they are generally desirous of becoming possessors of land, often in larger quantities than they can turn to profitable account. This desire once accomplished, which is a very easy matter in New South Wales, their ambition seems to be too readily satisfied. There seems no reason why a small settler should not earn money enough to live in comfort and even luxury by occasionally combining labour for wages with the cultivation of his own land. But, for what reason I know not, it is seldom that anything like comfort is to be seen amongst this class up the country. A man will just run up a rude slab hut for himself and his family, often with room enough between the slabs to put a hand through. The roof is easily made with sheets of bark tied on. Sometimes there is not even a window, and only one hole in the roof for the light to come in and the smoke to go out at. The floor is the bare ground, good enough in dry weather, in wet weather very likely killing off a child or two with consumption or rheumatic fever. The bread they eat is sometimes so bad and so sour that it is impossible for anyone unused to it to digest it, though any good bushman can make a damper in the ashes as sweet and wholesome as possible. Their mutton is often half wasted, and the rest cooked to the consistency of leather. The bones are thrown away, for who ever heard of soup or broth in the bush? It is too much trouble to grow vegetables. I went to one ‘accommodation-house’ (an inferior kind of inn), where there was a cow and plenty of milk, but it was too much