acres, at 5s. per acre. The purchase was to be conditional upon actual occupation and improvement, the payment being spread over ten annual instalments, called rents, of 1s. 6d., 1s., and 6d. per acre respectively. Provision was also made for homestead selections not to exceed 80 acres of agricultural land or 160 acres of pastoral land, at a yearly rental for five years of 9d. an acre in the case of agricultural land and 6d. an acre for pastoral country. This measure, having become law, caused a tremendous rush for land, and in some cases, no doubt, too large areas were taken up, regarded from the standpoint of the public interest, the abuse partly arising from faulty classification by the Government Commissioners. By at least one of these officers it was held, for example, that land, no matter how accessible or good its quality, was only second-class pastoral if destitute of surface water. But, whatever abuses crept in, there can be no doubt that the Act of 1868 was the first legislation to place the people on the land in areas of such extent, of such quality, and at such prices as were then deemed requisite for successful occupation. Many of the most prosperous farmers of to-day, or their parents, settled under the 1868 Act, and now form most valuable members of the community. In 1869 the Pastoral Leases Act was passed by the Lilley Government, and gave the lessees in the unsettled districts a better tenure than they had before enjoyed--21 years in respect of new country and renewed leases, and 14 years in the case of existing leases, with septennial automatic reappraisements of rent in all instances. The Liberal members of the Assembly assented to a pre-emptive purchase clause in this Act by which a lessee was empowered to purchase on his run without competition an area of 2,560 acres, containing permanent improvements made by him, at the price of 10s. per acre. But it was only discovered by many members after the Act had become law that a run might mean a block of 25 square miles, and that a lessee with a dozen blocks could secure strategic freeholds in as many different parts of his holding. However, the provision remained unaltered until in 1884 the Minister for Lands in the Griffith Ministry (Mr. Charles Boydell Dutton) refused to sanction further purchases of the kind, and during the same year endeavoured to sweep away the privilege by new legislation. Parliament, however, refused to repeal the provision, and would only consent to withhold the privilege of pre-emption in respect of leases acquired after the passage of the Land Act of 1884. Altogether 363 pre-emptive selections in respect of as many runs were made. By the Act of 1868 the pastoral lessees in the settled districts had also been granted ten years' leases for the unresumed halves of their runs; but in both cases the Minister was empowered to resume part of any run on giving six months' notice.