io6 



AUSTRALIAN PICTURES. 



worthy, thirty miles north of Adelaide, experimental farms in various parts 

 of the colony, and the lectures delivered in the chief agricultural centres. 

 The yield is so dependent on the rainfall that the average for the colony 

 rarely exceeds ten bushels per acre, and occasionally falls below three. The 

 subject of irrigation has lately been warmly taken up by the agricultural 

 community, and the next few years will see not only a more rational system 

 of farming, but the adoption of means to render that community less 

 dependent on the uncertain rainfall. At the London Exhibition a splendid 



Reaping in South Adelaide. 



sample of wheat grown at Mount Barker — a beautifully situated township 

 amongst the hills, twenty miles south-east of Adelaide — obtained the highest 

 award. 



Of the show places of South Australia none are more interesting than 

 the curious caves of the Mosquito Plains. They have been described at 

 length by the naturalist Tennison Woods, in his Geological Observations of 

 South Australia: 'In the midst of a sandy, swampy country, a series of 

 caves is found, whose internal beauty is at strange variance with the wildness 



