The scarcity of labourers is indeed a difficulty, and it will remain a difficulty till the farmers provide more adequately for the comfort of their hands. The married man is altogether at a discount on the Australian station and farm. In the former the men, all more or less casual employees, live together in a large hut, served by a special cook; in the latter they live with their employer. Any accommodation for wife or family is very rare indeed, so that a married man who secures work in the country must, for the most part, maintain his belongings separately in lodgings in town. One hears a very great deal of virtuous indignation expressed in regard to the overcrowding of the towns, and the fact that men who are out of work there will not take billets as farm labourers. Also, on the other hand, that men do not marry as they should, that the legitimate birth-rate is so low and the percentage of illegitimate children so high. But if a man is normal and honest-minded, with a liking for clean living, he needs a wife and children and a home of his own. As a single man, wandering from station to station for shearing and harvesting, he has, on the whole, a very good time, plenty of company, plenty of money to spend, and no responsibilities. But the better sort of men do not fear responsibilities, and they want something more than a good time; so that, after a few years, they get sick of the wandering life and wish to settle down. In the country, however much they might desire it, there is, indeed, very little chance of this for farm labourers when once they are married. They may, perhaps, have saved enough to start a tiny farm of their own, but it means ceaseless drudgery, and only too often a life of complete isolation both for husbands and wives, while the masters, whom they would be only too willing to continue to serve, have no place for them. There is a great deal good in Australia that is not at all good in England, particularly in the life of the working-man; but I have found no parallel to the comfortable two-storied cottages, surrounded by good gardens, which one sees gathered round English farm-houses. When cottages such as these are built; when a labourer can settle down for life on one farm, and grow his own vegetables, keep poultry, and purchase a cow; and can see his own family growing up healthily and happily around him, then I believe that Victoria and her sister States will have no need to complain of her working-people all flocking to the big towns; while a new generation of agricultural labourers, bred and born to country life, will thus be insured, the number of illegitimate children be lessened, and emigration bear a more tempting face to the English labourer than it has done heretofore—so far, at least, as Australia is concerned.