When I landed for the first time in Australia the relations between the landowners and the working-people were certainly far happier than they are now. People were proud of the vast estates, as indicative of the size of the country; of the immense flocks of sheep, and the merino wool that nowhere else could be matched for quality and quantity. Certain especially silky wools are procured from sheep in certain parts of the Western District of Victoria, and nowhere else, lambs’ wool actually reaching the price of 2s. a pound in Geelong market this last season. It was famous wool such as this, grown largely by the Macarthur and Russell families, which built up the reputation of Victoria far more surely than gold ever did, or pigs or onions ever will. Sheep do not reach to such a pitch of perfection by chance, and the Western District merinoes would scarcely be recognized by their original progenitors, popularly supposed to have emerged from the Ark. Immense sums of money have been spent on importing animals and bringing them to the highest pitch of perfection, and a question that has got to be faced is: Who—when the land is cut up into small holdings—will have either the money or enterprise necessary for importing fresh blood; and how will all the evils of inter-breeding, always such a danger on small farms, be avoided? Even now stud sheep are being sent out of the country, one owner a few months back having shipped off close on a dozen to Natal, feeling, I suppose, that there was nothing more to be made out of valuable sheep in a country which was, bit by bit, being cut away from under his feet. “Men are more valuable than sheep,” is the parrot-like cry of politicians—_some_ men I would say. In any case, men can live on sheep, and they cannot—unless they are cannibals—live on each other. If the large estates are not put to a proper use, if the sheep and wool they produce are a menace to the credit of the country, or when all the unsettled land is gone, then a reconstruction will become imperative. Meanwhile it is well to remember what has been done with the sheep, and what the sheep have done, and are still doing, for the country.