14 AUSTRALIAN AGRICULTURE. 



successfully through any pursuit. And such is the fact : 

 There are few occupations that call for more skilful 

 perseverance than agriculture. On the other hand, with 

 these requisites, there are few that offer safer prospects 

 of making an independent livelihood. 



THE SEASONS THE CLIMATE. 



Australia, to those who know little or nothing of the 

 country, is a land of perpetual summer, subject to terrific 

 floods and excessive droughts the latter, as a whole, 

 prevailing. This belief is not confined to persons in other 

 countries, whose knowledge of Australia has been acquired 

 from books of the kind which state that flowers have no 

 odors in Australia, that birds do not sing here, and other 

 absurd things. Colonists, old colonists among them, have 

 opinions of the country and the climate that differ but 

 slightly from the foregoing. One reason for this belief is 

 the extraordinary similarity of the climate of the seaboard 

 towns, considering the distance they are apart. Take 

 Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, the whole year 

 round, and the climate is wonderfully alike ; nor does it 

 change to anything like the degree the geographical 

 situation of these places might warrant us believing. As 

 we travel northwards to Newcastle, Grafton, Brisbane, 

 Mack ay, Towns ville, or southwards to Melbourne, Adelaide, 

 Perth, the change is just a little more decided. There is a 

 little more winter in the southern sections ; a little more 

 summer in the northern. The cultivation of sugar-cane 

 has shown, to an extent unthought of before, that in 

 Australia the frosts of the winter season are felt for 

 hundreds of miles within the tropics. 



But leaving the coast and travelling inland, the 

 common notion that perpetual summer prevails is soon 

 upset, and very often in a manner that is telling. A 

 hundred miles inland from the coast, unless in low-lying 

 situations sheltered by mountain ranges from the west, the 

 winter season is very decided. Frosts prevail in these 

 inland districts all over the country, even to the centre of 

 Australia. In the south, and as far north as the Queens- 

 land border, snow is common during the months of July 



