Since that period gold has repeatedly been discovered in fresh localities of the adjoining colony of Victoria, the "yield" and the number of diggers being also steadily increasing. Many thousands at present leave New South Wales annually to try their fortune in other fields than those of agriculture. In 1857 upwards of 26,000 persons left this colony for Victoria. Consequently, the price of labour has risen throughout Australia, and while it has thus increased in expense it has become more uncertain and unreliable. A large number of buildings, especially in the country, have been left unfinished, and the clearing and cultivation of numerous tracts of land have been abandoned. These temporary evils, however, cannot be permitted to outweigh the enormous advantages derivable from the discovery of the gold-fields of Australia. It has attracted the attention of universal mankind to a distant British colony, hitherto almost unnoticed, it has peopled the country with magic celerity, centupled the value of the land, made its results appreciable in the remotest districts of the globe, and raised the colony of Victoria within a few years, in national prosperity, increased trade, and extended cultivation, to a degree of importance usually the slow growth of centuries of industry. The discovery of the gold-fields had at the same time important scientific consequences, chiefly in the way of geological researches, which resulted in proving that the widespread popular opinion, that the Australian continent belongs to the latest geological era, and had comparatively recently emerged from the sea, is entirely erroneous. Rich palæontological collections confirm the opinion that Australia is not the latest, but rather the earliest, continent. In several parts of the colony the fossil remains of various colossal animals have been discovered, which, as since measured, must have stood from 10 to 16 feet in height, and correspond to our diluvial Pachydermata in Europe. In like manner, with the exception of some quite insignificant tertiary strata of small extent, only crystalline rocks and primary formations (from the Silurian upwards) form the chief bulk of the continent. The entire series of secondary strata seems to be absent. From this fact it necessarily results that Australia has been a continent since the end of the primary epoch, that it never has been covered by the sea, but remained ever since the beginning of the secondary formations, through all those countless ages during which Europe was being convulsed by the most tremendous geological revolutions, a habitable soil, on which plants and beasts, undisturbed by change in the inorganic world, might have continued to flourish down to our own times. Viewed in this light the fauna and flora of Australia would be the most ancient and primitive in the world.