&c., tell of a coming geological transformation, which however--we mention this for the consolation of the settlers--may yet be postponed for myriads of years. The system of transportation, concerning which so loud an outcry has recently been made, has so materially assisted in developing the resources of the country, that it would hardly be right to quit Botany Bay without a few remarks on the penal colony which was in existence there till 1840. For there is no spot on the globe better adapted than New South Wales to serve as a stand-point, whence any one might accurately study the advantages and drawbacks of the English transportation system, as also its influence upon a strongly recalcitrant society. In brief, we purpose to subject the system as it subsisted for half a century in Australia to a thorough analysis, inasmuch as it seems to us that, in our present unnatural social conditions, transportation, i. e. the sudden transference of the criminal to totally new conditions of external life, seems to furnish the much-desired turning point whence we may expect a lasting moral improvement of the individual. Our Austrian prisons, especially those in which the cell system has not been introduced, are simply houses of detention, not penitentiaries, still less reformatories. The incarcerated criminal is a burden to himself and to society, to which he is only in the most exceptional cases restored improved by confinement. The charge of maintaining him increases year by year, without any return being made by utilizing the labour of the prisoner. In penal colonies, on the other hand, the convict works as much for his own benefit as for that of society. He throws open new immeasurable tracts of land to civilization, trade, and industry. The evil effects of certain climates upon the health of the convict can be corrected by proper ordinances, till it is reduced to a barely appreciable minimum. The free settler is also exposed in unsettled countries to dangerous illnesses, but as his circumstances improve these disappear before the cleared forest, the cultivated patch, the drained swamp.