Geological Speculations as to Age of Australia. 69 



and tlie number of diggers being also steadily increasing. 

 Many thousands at present leave New South Wales annually 

 to try their fortune in other fields than those of agriculture. 

 In 1857 upwards of 26,000 persons left this colony for Victoria. 

 Consequently, the price of labour has risen throughout Austra- 

 lia, and while it has thus increased in expense it has become 

 more uncertain and unreliable. A large number of buildings, 

 especially in the country, have been left unfinished, and the 

 clearing and cultivation of numerous tracts of land have been 

 abandoned. These temporary evils, however, cannot be per- 

 mitted to outweigh the enormous advantages derivable from 

 the discovery of the gold-fields of Australia. It has attracted 

 the attention of universal mankind to a distant British colony, 

 hitherto almost unnoticed, it has peopled the country with 

 magic celerity, centupled the value of the land, made its results 

 appreciable in the remotest districts of the globe, and raised the 

 colony of Victoria within a few years, in national prosperity, 

 increased trade, and extended cultivation, to a degree of im- 

 portance usually the slow growth of centuries of industry. 



The discovery of the gold-fields had at the same time 

 important scientific consequences, chiefly in the way of geo- 

 logical researches, which resulted in proving that the wide- 

 spread popular opinion, that the Australian continent belongs 

 to the latest geological era, and had comparatively recently 

 emerged from the sea, is entirely erroneous. Rich palaeonto- 

 logic^l collections confirm the opinion that Australia is not 

 the latest, but rather the earliest, continent. In several parts 



