This was the busy season with the settlers, being both the wool and grain harvest. Shearing had commenced some time before; but many who had numerous flocks were still engaged in that profitable occupation; the packing, sorting, screwing, and sewing in bales, occupying much time; wool being the staple article of the colony, and forming the principal riches of the settler. It is interesting for a stranger visiting the country at this period to view the processes of washing and shearing the animals—sorting, pressing, and packing the wool;—to often hear the terms of short and long staple wool, and to see the specimens of it arranged in small locks, showing the different degrees of fineness. If the shearing season is deferred, various grass seeds get into the wool, particularly those of the _Anthisteria Australis_, or kangaroo grass, one of the most abundant perhaps of the native grasses, frequently not only injuring the fleece, but, aided by its awns, penetrating even to the skin of the sheep. The Australian climate is admirably calculated for wool growing; the improvement of the fleeces during the late years, and the assorting of the wool by competent persons educated for the purpose in Germany, have produced for it so high a character in the London market, that the quantity exported from the colony is now great, and annually increasing: many of the settlers sell their wool to buyers in the colony, who speculate upon it, while others send it direct to agents in England. The golden harvest also increases the business of the settler, usually occurring at the same time with the wool season, and the fields of grain around the scattered habitations render the scenery extremely rich. The prospect of the harvest this season was favourable both for its abundance and quality, although in some crops smut prevailed, the most were entirely free from it. It is a curious circumstance that self-sown wheat never smuts; that early sown is said to have little or none, and the wheat never smuts but when in blossom. I saw at one farm an ear of wheat from one of the fields, one side of which bore fine, healthy, and full grains, whilst the opposite side was entirely destroyed by smut. Wheat appears to suffer most. At one of the stations in the Tumat country the wheat suffered from smut, whilst barley and rye were perfectly free from it; and finer crops of the latter grain had never been seen. There are, I understand, many kinds of wheat that never suffer from smut in the colony; why are they not then sown in preference? The plan of trying different kinds of wheat and other grain, from various parts of the world, is worthy of attention, and would no doubt eventually confer much benefit, and add to the resources of the colony. There is a grain which the settlers have lately commenced to cultivate, called the “skinless oat,” said to be brought from China, that yields greater returns than the usually cultivated kind.