During the winter, which is marked more by an unpleasant damp and chilliness than real cold, will come sudden, fervently warm days, which bring all sorts of unlikely flowers into bloom, so that one sees Oriental poppies flaunting among the primroses, and heliotrope, and carnations out with the first daffodils, while it is seldom indeed that there is not pink bloom on the ivy-leaf geraniums. Some writers on Australia complain that because most of the completely native trees do not shed their leaves, Australians do not know what a true spring is like. Perhaps they are right in one way; the longer a man has been starved the more completely will he appreciate a good meal when he gets it; and there is no such length of colourless winter days to struggle through in Australia—living only by this one hope, that the spring must come at last, however tardily—as there is in England, and therefore relief must be felt far less ardently. But against this let us weigh the thousand and one subtle surprises of Nature in such a country. Autumn, indeed, comes sobbing through the land, sweeping her heavy rain-drenched garments over lawn and border, till the flowers drop to earth, flattened, brown, and bedraggled; while “envious, sneaping” frosts nip the dahlias, and flush the roses with hectic tints. It is nonsense to say that the leaves do not fall, for they do, even from the native trees, not in a mass, it is true, but even more sadly, one at a time, as if the tree were with infinite reluctance slowly parting from each emblem of her youth, the tattered bark hanging in ribbons round her, the sport of every breeze; while everywhere in the cities and gardens there are English trees of all sorts to be seen, with leaves that fall in a fashion almost cheerful compared with the slow agony of their Australian compeers. Then suddenly the sun breaks through the clouds. Brilliant patches of blue spread over the sky till they join in one unbroken sea of cobalt. One forgets to put fresh logs on the fire, which the sun is laughing out of countenance, flings open doors and windows, orders tea in the veranda, and fares forth with little packets of seeds and bits of sticks, to grub in the sweet teeming earth. What matter that in a couple more days winter may be back again? Anyhow, it is only a matter of three months, and that with innumerable such breaks.